and had to make up in the quantity of her
teaching what it lacked in the quality. She was fagged, and hunted, and
worried from morning till night by all the small girls in the school.
She would have been merry if she had had time, and she was witty
whenever she could get the chance of being anything but a machine; but
she was not always happy, for I slept in her room, and I sometimes heard
her crying in the night. As I remember her first she was young and
pretty, but as time went on she grew a little faded, and a little
harassed-looking; though I still thought her sweet enough for anything.

Well, Miss Kitty went down to the major, and I, following close upon her
heels, heard a little scream as I paused at the parlour door, and there
when I went in was a bronzed-looking gentleman holding Miss Kitty's two
hands in his, and looking in her face. And I could not care about the
birds for thinking of it, and when we went up to bed Miss Kitty told me
that Major Guthrie was an old friend of her family, and that he had said
he would call again. And surely enough he did call again; and then it
happened that the three Miss Sweetmans were invited out to an evening
party--a great event for them. I thought there was something very
particular about it, and so I took care to dress Miss Kitty with my own
hands. She had a plain white dress, and I insisted on lending her my
blue sash and coral necklace; and when she was dressed she put her
finger in her mouth, and asked, between laughing and crying, whether I
could further accommodate her with a coral and bells. She looked as
young as anybody, though she would make fun of herself. And when she
came in that night, and saw my open eyes waiting for her, she sat down
on my bed and began to cry, and told me that Major Guthrie had asked her
to marry him, and she was going to India as his wife. Then I heard the
whole story; how he had loved her dearly long ago; how her friends had
refused him because he was too poor, and she was too young; how after he
had gone off in a passion reverses had come upon them, and she and her
sisters had been obliged to open a school. And so Miss Kitty went out to
India, and the only thing that comforted me for her loss was the fact
that she took with her the embroidered handkerchief for my mother, and
the wrought cigar-case for my father, which it had taken my idleness a
whole year to produce. Ah, me! and my eyes never beheld either of these
three again: friend, fa