As for Kate, she said she should work on, no matter how much money Harry
made. There was no knowing what might happen.

But the most important of Kate's duties was the personal attention she
paid to Aunt Matilda. She went over to the old woman's cabin every day
or two, and saw that she was kept warm and had what she needed.

And these visits had a good influence on the old woman, for her cabin
soon began to look much neater, now that a nice little girl came to see
her so often.

When the spring came on, Aunt Matilda actually took it into her head to
whitewash her cabin, a thing she had not done for years. She and Uncle
Braddock worked at it by turns. The old woman was too stiff and
rheumatic to keep at such work long at a time; but she was very proud of
her whitewashing; and when she was tired of working at the inside of her
cabin, she used to go out and whitewash the trunks of the trees around
the house. She had seen trees thus ornamented, and she thought they were
perfectly beautiful.

Kate was violently opposed to anything of this kind, and, at last, told
Aunt Matilda that if she persisted in surrounding her house with what
looked like a forest of tombstones, she, Kate, would have to stop coming
there.

So Aunt Matilda, in a manner, desisted.

But one day she noticed a little birch-tree, some distance from the
house, and the inclination to whitewash that little birch was too strong