urhood spoke to her and the girls seeing, asked him
about Kate, learning thereby that her father was worth more money than
all of theirs put together. Some of them had accepted the explanation
that Kate was "bewildered" and had acted hastily; but when the young
man finished Bates history, they merely thought her mean, and left her
severely to herself, so her only recourse was to study so diligently,
and recite so perfectly that none of them could equal her, and this she
did.

In acute discomfort and with a sore heart, Kate passed her first six
weeks away from home. She wrote to each man on the list of school
directors she had taken from Nancy Ellen's desk. Some answered that
they had their teachers already engaged, others made no reply. One
bright spot was the receipt of a letter from Nancy Ellen saying she was
sending her best dress, to be very careful of it, and if Kate would let
her know the day she would be home she would meet her at the station.
Kate sent her thanks, wore the dress to two lectures, and wrote the
letter telling when she would return.

As the time drew nearer she became sickeningly anxious about a school.
What if she failed in securing one? What if she could not pay back
Agatha's money? What if she had taken "the wings of morning," and
fallen in her flight? In desperation she went to the Superintendent of
the Normal and told him her trouble. He wrote her a fine letter of
recommendation and she sent it to one of the men from whom she had not
heard, the director of a school in the village of Walden, seven miles
east of Hartley, being seventeen miles from her home, thus seeming to
Kate a desirable location, also she knew the village to be pretty and
the school one that paid well. Then she finished her work the best she
could, and disappointed and anxious, entered the train for home.

When the engine whistled at the bridge outside Hartley Kate arose,
lifted her telescope from the rack overhead, and made her way to the
door, so that she was the first person to leave the car when it
stopped. As she stepped to the platform she had a distinct shock, for
her father reached for the telescope, while his greeting and his face
were decidedly friendly, for him. As they walked down the street Kate
was trying wildly to think of the best thing to say when he asked if
she had a school. But he did not ask. Then she saw in the pocket of
his light summer coat a packet of letters folded inside a newspaper,