twice, if not oftener.

Kate sat on a log, a most unusual occurrence for her, for she was
familiar only with bare, hot houses, furnished with meagre
necessities; reeking stables, barnyards and vegetable gardens.
She knew less of the woods than the average city girl; but there
was a soothing wind, a sweet perfume, a calming silence that
quieted her tense mood and enabled her to think clearly; so the
review went on over years of work and petty economies, amounting
to one grand aggregate that gave to each of seven sons house,
stock, and land at twenty-one; and to each of nine daughters a
bolt of muslin and a fairly decent dress when she married, as the
seven older ones did speedily, for they were fine, large,
upstanding girls, some having real beauty, all exceptionally
well-trained economists and workers. Because her mother had the
younger daughters to help in the absence of the elder, each girl
had been allowed the time and money to prepare herself to teach a
country school; all of them had taught until they married. Nancy
Ellen, the beauty of the family, the girl next older than Kate,
had taken the home school for the second winter. Going to school
to Nancy Ellen had been the greatest trial of Kate's life, until
the possibility of not going to Normal had confronted her.

Nancy Ellen was almost as large as Kate, quite as pink, her
features assembled in a manner that made all the difference, her
jet-black hair as curly as Kate's, her eyes big and dark, her lips
red. As for looking at Kate twice, no one ever looked at her at
all if Nancy Ellen happened to be walking beside her. Kate bore
that without protest; it would have wounded her pride to rebel
openly; she did Nancy Ellen's share of the work to allow her to