fifteen minutes," said Mrs. Holt.

"Well, I'll just show you," he boasted.

George Holt pushed back his plate, wiped his mouth, brushed his teeth
at the washing place on the back porch, and sauntered around the house
to seat himself on the front porch steps. Kate saw him there and
remained in her room. When he had waited an hour he arose and tapped
on her door. Kate opened it.

"Miss Bates," he said. "I have been doing penance an hour. I am very
sorry I was such a boor. I was in earnest when I said I didn't get the
gad when I needed it. I had a big disappointment to-day, and I came in
sore and cross. I am ashamed of myself, but you will never see me that
way again. I know I will make a failure of my profession if I don't be
more polite than Mother ever taught me to be. Won't you let me be your
scholar, too? Please do come over to the ravine where it is cool and
give me my first lesson. I need you dreadfully."

Kate was desperately in need of human companionship in that instant,
herself, someone who could speak, and sin, and suffer, and repent. As
she looked straight in the face of the man before her she saw, not him
being rude and quarrelling pettily with his mother, but herself racing
around the dining table pursued by her father raving like an insane
man. Who was she to judge or to refuse help when it was asked? She
went with him; and Mrs. Holt, listening and peering from the side of
the window blind of her room across the hall, watched them cross the
road and sit beside each other on the bank of the ravine in what seemed
polite and amicable conversation. So she heaved a deep sigh of relief
and went to wash the dishes and plan breakfast. "Better feed her up
pretty well 'til she gits the habit of staying here and mebby the rest
who take boarders will be full," she said to herself. "Time enough to
go at skimpin' when she's settled, and busy, an' I get the whip hand."

But in planning to get the "whip hand" Mrs. Holt reckoned without Kate.
She had been under the whip hand all her life. Her dash to freedom had
not been accomplished without both mental and physical hurt. She was
doing nothing but going over her past life minutely, and as she
realized more fully with each review how barren and unlovely it had
been, all the strength and fresh young pride in her arose in imperative
demand for something better in the future. She listened with interest
to what George Holt said to her. All her life she