of becoming. Alas! for Dr. Morris! He was very near the farmhouse now,
and there were only a few minutes between him and the cloud which would
darken his horizon so completely. Katy was alone, sitting up in her
pretty dressing gown of blue, which was so becoming to her pure
complexion. Her hair, which had been all cut away during her long
sickness, was growing out again somewhat darker than before, and lay in
rings upon her head, making her look more childish than ever. But to
this Morris did not object. He liked to have her a child, and he
thought he had never seen her so wholly beautiful as she was this
morning, when, with glowing cheek and dancing eyes, she greeted him as
he came in.

"Oh, Dr. Morris!" she began, holding up a letter she had in her hand,
"I am so glad you've come, for I wanted to tell you so badly Wilford has
not forgotten me, as I used to think, and as I guess you thought, too,
though you did not say so. He has written, and he is coming again, if I
will let him; and, oh, Morris! I am so glad! Ain't you? Seeing you knew
all about it, and never told Helen, I'll let you read the letter."

And she held it toward the young man leaning against the mantel and
panting for the breath which came so heavily.

Something he said apologetically about being snow blind, for there
was that day quite a fall of soft spring snow; and then with a mighty
effort, which made his heart quiver with pain, Morris was himself once
more, and took the letter in his hand.

"Perhaps I had better not read it," he said, but Katy insisted that he
might, and thinking to himself: "It will cure me sooner perhaps," he
read the few lines Wilford Cameron had written to his "dear little