her "the prettiest creeter she had ever seen;" Aunt Betsy decided that
her hoops were too big and her clothes too fine for a Barlow; while
Helen, who looked beyond dress, or style, or manner, straight into her
sister's soft, blue eyes, brimming with love and tears, decided that
Katy was not changed for the worse. Nor was she. Truthful, loving,
simple-hearted and full of playful life she had gone from home, and she
came back the same--never once thinking of the difference between the
farmhouse and Mrs. Woodhull's palace, or if she did, giving the
preference to the former.

"It was perfectly splendid to get home," she said, handing her gloves
to Helen, her sunshade to her mother, her satchel to Aunt Hannah, and
tossing her bonnet in the vicinity of the water pail--from which it was
saved by Aunt Betsy, who, remembering the ways of her favorite child,
put it carefully in the press, examining it closely first and wondering
how much it cost.

Deciding that "it was a good thumpin' price," she returned to the
kitchen, where Katy, dancing and curveting in circles, scarcely stood
still long enough for them to see that in spite of boarding school fare,
of which she had complained so bitterly, her cheeks were rounded, her
eyes brighter, and her lithe little figure fuller than of old. She had
improved in looks, but she did not appear to know it, or to guess how
beautiful she was in the fresh bloom of seventeen, with her golden hair
waving around her childish forehead, and her deep, blue eyes laughing so
expressively with each change of her constantly varying face. Everything
animate and inanimate pertaining to the old house was noticed by her.
She kissed the kitten, squeezed the cat, hugged the dog, and hugged the
little goat, tied to his post in the clover yard and trying so hard to
get free. The horse, to whom she fed handfuls of grass, had been already