also watched and
waited:

"I'm afraid, Susanna, that our peaceful days are over. While she was out
to-night, and I knew not where, and I was so troubled and anxious, I
felt that it would be wrong, really wrong to burden myself with such a
charge. For years her father left me ignorant of how his life was
passing, and it seemed to me he had no right to impose the care of his
daughter upon me, just because I had once tried to be good to him and he
had once seemed to love me. And I knew it would be hard for you and
Moses, too. We're all old together; and to rear another child--such an
odd child, at that--I wonder, is it right?"

Now it so chanced that old Susanna had been entirely won by the manner
in which Kate had chosen to be undressed and tended by the servant
rather than the statelier mistress. Also, in the old days when "Johnny"
had been with them, though the aunt had loved she had, also, reproved
him; but childless Susanna, whose own little son had died, simply loved
and never reproved. She now answered, promptly:

"Yes, Eunice Maitland, it's as right as right. She wouldn't have been
sent if she hadn't been meant, would she? And she's the cut an' dried
image of her own pa, bless him. Send her off? Course you'll do nothin'
o' the kind. If you do, I'll leave, an' you can get somebody else to
take my place. So there, that's my say-so, an' you're welcome to it."

At the thought of Katharine's mobile little face being a "cut and dried
image" of anybody Miss Eunice smiled, and her perplexity vanished--for
the time, at least. Then, hearing the kitchen door unclose, she
remarked:

"Well, I hear Moses coming in, and we three old people must get to rest.
I am surely obliged to you for the help and comfort you are to me,
Susanna, and to Moses, too. We'll do the best we can, and day by day."

"Certain, Eunice. That's the way to live, an' all's well 'at ends well,
as we hope she will--this little orphant thrust upon us without no
druther of our own, an' a bad beginnin' gen'ally makes a good ending;
an' I 'low I'd best take one more peek into the sittin'-room chamber,
afore I go to bed myself. Good night. Don't worry. I've fixed fish-cakes
for breakfast."

With which comforting assurance for the morrow, the Widow Sprigg took
herself out of the room, and quiet fell upon the old home.

CHAPTER V.

CHESTNUTS AND GOLD MINES

"May I help? I think I could do that. It doesn't look hard," said
Katharine, wandering in