study and have her Normal course; she remained at home plainly
clothed to loan Nancy Ellen her best dress when she attended
Normal; but when she found that she was doomed to finish her last
year at school under Nancy Ellen, to work double so that her
sister might go to school early and remain late, coming home tired
and with lessons to prepare for the morrow, some of the
spontaneity left Kate's efforts.

She had a worse grievance when Nancy Ellen hung several new
dresses and a wrapper on her side of the closet after her first
pay-day, and furnished her end of the bureau with a white hair
brush and a brass box filled with pink powder, with a swan's-down
puff for its application. For three months Kate had waited and
hoped that at least "thank you" would be vouchsafed her; when it
failed for that length of time she did two things: she studied so
diligently that her father called her into the barn and told her
that if before the school, she asked Nancy Ellen another question
she could not answer, he would use the buggy whip on her to within
an inch of her life. The buggy whip always had been a familiar
implement to Kate, so she stopped asking slippery questions,
worked harder than ever, and spent her spare time planning what
she would hang in the closet and put on her end of the bureau when
she had finished her Normal course, and was teaching her first
term of school.

Now she had learned all that Nancy Ellen could teach her, and much
that Nancy Ellen never knew: it was time for Kate to be starting
away to school. Because it was so self-evident that she should
have what the others had had, she said nothing about it until the
time came; then she found her father determined that she should