"I could not well help it. I did not mean any harm," Katy said, timidly,
for at first she had shrunk from the proposition, but Mrs. Woodhull
seemed to think it right, urging it on until she had consented, and so
she said to Morris, explaining how kind Mr. Cameron was, and how careful
not to remind her of her indebtedness to him, attending to and
anticipating every want as if she had been his sister.

"You would like Mr. Cameron, Cousin Morris. He made me think of you a
little, only he is prouder," and Katy's hand moved up Morris' coat
sleeve till it rested on his shoulder.

"Perhaps so," Morris answered, feeling a growing resentment toward one
who, it seemed to him, had done him some great wrong.

But Wilford was not to blame, he reflected. He could not well help
liking the bright little Katy--some; and so, conquering all ungenerous
feelings, he turned to her at last and said:

"Did my little Cousin Kitty like Wilford Cameron?"

Something in Morris' voice startled Katy strangely; her hand came down
from his shoulder, and for an instant there swept over her an emotion
similar to what she had felt when with Wilford Cameron she rambled
along the shores of Lake George, or sat alone with him on the deck of
the steamer which carried them down Lake Champlain. But Morris had
always been her brother, and she did not guess how hard it was for him
to keep from telling her then that she was more to him than a sister.
Had he told her, this story, perhaps, had not been written; but he kept
silence, and so it is ours to record how Katy answered frankly at last: