I can't, so far as I am
concerned, the arrangement I have made is much better. The thing that
really hurts the worst, aside from disappointing you, is that Father
says I was not honest in what I did."

"But what DID you do?" cried Nancy Ellen.

So Kate told them exactly what she had done.

"Of course you had a right to your own letter, when you could see the
address on it, and it was where you could pick it up," said Robert Gray.

Kate lifted dull eyes to his face.

"Thank you for so much grace, at any rate," she said.

"I don't blame you a bit," said Nancy Ellen. "In the same place I'd
have taken it myself."

"You wouldn't have had to," said Kate. "I'm too abrupt--too much like
the gentleman himself. You would have asked him in a way that would
have secured you the letter with no trouble."

Nancy Ellen highly appreciated these words of praise before her lover.
She arose immediately.

"Maybe I could do something with him now," she said. "I'll go and see."

"You shall do nothing of the kind," said Kate. "I am as much Bates as
he is. I won't be taunted afterward that he turned me out and that I
sent you to him to plead for me."

"I'll tell him you didn't want me to come, that I came of my own
accord," offered Nancy Ellen.

"And he won't believe you," said Kate.

"Would you consent for me to go?" asked Robert Gray.

"Certainly not! I can look out for myself."

"What shall you do?" asked Nancy Ellen anxiously.

"That is getting slightly ahead of me," said Kate. "If I had been
diplomatic I could have evaded this until morning. Adam, 3d, is to be
over then, prepared to take me anywhere I want to go. What I have to
face now is a way to spend the night without letting the neighbours
know that I am turned out. How can I manage that?"

Nancy Ellen and Robert each began making suggestions, but Kate
preferred to solve her own problems.

"I think," she said, "that I shall hide the telescope under the privet
bush, there isn't going to be rain to-night; and then I will go down to
Hiram's and stay all night and watch for Adam when he passes in the
morning. Hiram always grumbles because we don't come oftener."

"Then we will go with you," said Nancy Ellen. "It will be a pleasant
evening walk, and we can keep you company and pacify my twin brother at
the same time."

So they all walked to the adjoining farm on the south and when Nancy
Ellen and Robert were ready to start back, Kate said she was tir