ything where to
go. I just know something dreadful happened, because we never can find
one thing about her after she got there."

"But I don't believe she's dead!" exclaimed Kittie firmly. "I wouldn't
believe it if I wanted to; and I think some time, or somehow, we will
find her, or she will come back to us."

"Well I hope so I'm sure, for it will never seem right without her,"
said Kat. "Seems to me, we all lived so happy, with no troubles of any
kind, until all of a sudden, then everything happens all at once. Home
has never seemed the same since papa died."

"When you look back and think how things have changed, don't it seem
strange," said Kittie, dropping her sewing and looking pensively off at
the wood-pile. "It seems so funny, to think that Miss Howard is married,
and that people live in the little old school-house.

"Didn't we used to have fun there?"

"Yes, we did, and we're getting old dreadful fast," said Kat, ruefully.

"I can't imagine anything more dreadful than getting to be young ladies,
and having to wear long dresses, and done-up hair, and always be polite
and proper. I think it's horrible to be nearly fifteen!"

Kittie loved fun as much as Kat, but she was not quite so frolicsome in
her tastes, nor so averse to a graceful train, or a lady-like structure
of hair. In fact, she had many ideas of ideal young-ladyhood that would
have amazed and dismayed her twin, had they been known. Any one who knew
them well was no longer at a loss to know which was which, for while in
childhood they had been too similar to ever be distinguished, the coming
years brought different ideas to each, and left their print in looks and
manner. Kat was wildly rebellious at the thought of growing up; she
wanted to remain in the blissful days of short hair and dresses, when
she could race with anybody, jump a fence, climb trees, and in every way
be as boyish as she could, to pay up for being a girl. Consequently she
always had a fly-away, unsettled look about her, rebelled at the
lengthened dresses, insisted on wearing her hair in a flying braid,
wouldn't be induced to cultivate ease and grace, and altogether was as
wild and unconquerable on the threshold of fifteen as she had been in
the freedom of twelve. Kittie, on the contrary, had a decided love for
grace, and the ease of a cultivated young lady. She did her hair up in
various and complicated fashions, occasionally practiced with a train,
and had learned to bow with th