you are hard. Sometimes I should like to shake you."

Elizabeth laughed.

"That's the way you worship me," she answered. "I suspected it was a
strange kind of adoration, largely made up of snubbing."

"It's not snubbing," retorted Katie, "it is trying to rouse you to what
you you might be. But I am wasting my breath; you don't believe a word I
say."

"I should like to believe it," returned the girl, smiling a little
sadly. "But even if I did believe every word of it, it would seem to me
a great deal nicer to be like you, beautiful all the time, and one whom
everybody loves. But there's one thing to be said, if it were I who were
beautiful, I could'nt have the pleasure I do in looking at you, and
perhaps, after all, I shouldn't get any more enjoyment out of it."

"Oh, yes, you would," retorted the other, then bit her lips angrily at
her inadvertence. A shrewd smile flitted over Elizabeth's face, but she
made no comment, and Katie went on hurriedly to ask, "What shall we do
to amuse ourselves to-day, Betsey?" Another slight movement of the
hearer's lips responded. This name was Katie's special term of
endearment, and never used except when they were alone; no one else ever
called her by it.

"I don't know," she said. "Let us sit here as we are doing now. Move
your chair nearer the window and look down on the river. See the
blue-black shadows on it. And look at the forests, how they stretch away
with a few clearings here and there. A city behind us, to be sure, a