to
Silverton. Dr. Morris Grant he was now, and he had just come home from a
three years' sojourn in Paris, and was living in his own handsome
dwelling across the fields toward Silverton village, and half a mile or
more from Uncle Ephraim's farmhouse. He had written from Paris, offering
to send his cousins, Helen and Kate, to any school their mother might
select, and as Canandaigua was her choice, they had both gone thither a
year ago, Helen, the eldest, falling sick within the first three months,
and returning home to Silverton, satisfied that the New England schools
were good enough for her. This was Helen; but Katy was different. Katy
was more susceptible of polish and refinement--so the mother thought;
and as she arranged and rearranged the little parlor, lingering longest
by the piano, Dr. Morris' gift, she drew bright pictures of her favorite
child, wondering how the plain farmhouse and its inmates would seem to
her after Canandaigua and all she must have seen during her weeks of
travel since the close of the summer term. And then she wondered next
why Cousin Morris was so much annoyed when told that Katy had accepted
an invitation to accompany Mrs. Woodhull and her party on a trip to
Montreal and Lake George, taking Boston on her homeward route. Surely
Katy's movements were nothing to him, unless--and the little, ambitious
mother struck at random a few notes of the soft-toned piano as she
thought how possible it was that the interest always manifested by the
staid, quiet Morris Grant for her light-hearted Kate was more than a
brotherly interest, such as he would naturally feel for the daughter of
one who had been to him a second father. But Katy was so much a child
when he went away to Paris that it could not be. She would sooner think
of the dark-haired Helen, who was older and more like him.

"It's Helen, if anybody," she said aloud, just as a voice at the window
called out: "Please, Cousin Lucy, relieve me of these flowers. I brought
them over in honor of Katy's return."

Blushing guiltily, Mrs. Lennox advanced to meet a tall, dark-looking
man, with a grave, pleasant face, which, when he smiled, was strangely
attractive, from the sudden lighting up of the hazel eyes and the
glitter of the white, even teeth disclosed so fully to view.

"Oh, thank you, Morris! Kitty will like them, I am sure," Mrs. Lennox
said, taking from his hand a bouquet of the choice flowers which grew
only in the hothouse at Linwood. "Com