e best people now, an' I want folks to think well of you."

"I guess we're as good as they be," remarked Susan Ellen, looking at
some innocent passers-by with dark suspicion, but Katy tried indeed to
sit straight, and folded her hands prettily in her lap, and wished
with all her heart to be pleasing for her father's sake. Just then an
elderly woman saw the wagon and the sedate party it carried, and
smiled so kindly that it seemed to Katy as if Topham Corners had
welcomed and received them. She smiled back again as if this
hospitable person were an old friend, and entirely forgot that the
eyes of all Topham had been upon her.

"There, now we're coming to an elegant house that I want you to see;
you'll never forget it," said John Hilton. "It's where Judge Masterson
lives, the great lawyer; the handsomest house in the county, everybody
says."

"Do you know him, father?" asked Susan Ellen.

"I do," answered John Hilton proudly. "Him and my mother went to
school together in their young days, and were always called the two
best scholars of their time. The judge called to see her once; he
stopped to our house to see her when I was a boy. An' then, some years
ago--you've heard me tell how I was on the jury, an' when he heard my
name spoken he looked at me sharp, and asked if I wa'n't the son of
Catharine Winn, an' spoke most beautiful of your grandmother, an' how
well he remembered their young days together."

"I like to hear about that," said Katy.

"She had it pretty hard, I'm afraid, up on the old farm. She was
keepin' school in our district when father married her--that's the
main reason I backed 'em down when they wanted to tear the old
schoolhouse all to pieces," confided John Hilton, turning eagerly.
"They all say she lived longer up here on the hill than she could
anywhere, but she never had her health. I wa'n't but a boy when she
died. Father an' me lived alone afterward till the time your mother
come; 't was a good while, too; I wa'n't married so young as some. 'T
was lonesome, I tell you; father was plumb discouraged losin' of his
wife, an' her long sickness an' all set him back, an' we'd work all
day on the land an' never say a word. I s'pose 't is bein' so lonesome
early in life that makes me so pleased to have some nice girls growin'
up round me now."

There was a tone in her father's voice that drew Katy's heart toward
him with new affection. She dimly understood, but Susan Ellen was less
interested. The