And now that Brother Albert was coming to the new home in the new land he had never seen before, Katy’s heart was in her eyes.  She would show him so many things he had never seen, explain how the pocket-gophers built their mounds, show him the nestful of flying-squirrels—­had he ever seen flying-squirrels?  And she would show him Diamond Lake, and the speckled pickerel among the water-plants.  And she would point out the people, and entertain Albert with telling him their names and the curious gossip about them.  It was so fine to know something that even Albert, with all his learning, did not know.  And she would introduce Albert to him.  Would Albert like him?  Of course he would.  They were both such dear men.

And as the hours wore on, Katy grew more and more excited and nervous.  She talked about Albert to her mother till she wearied that worthy woman, to whom the arrival of any one was an excuse for dressing if possible in worse taste than usual, or at least for tying an extra ribbon in her hair, and the extra ribbon was sure to be of a hue entirely discordant with the mutually discordant ones that preceded it.  Tired of talking to her mother, she readily found an excuse to buy something—­ribbons, or candles, or hair-pins, or dried apples—­something kept in the very miscellaneous stock of the “Emporium,” and she knew who would wait upon her, and who would kindly prolong the small transaction by every artifice in his power, and thus give her time to tell him about her Brother Albert.  He would be so glad to hear about Albert.  He was always glad to hear her tell about anybody or anything.

And when the talk over the counter at the Emporium could not be farther prolonged, she had even stopped on her way home at Mrs. Ferret’s, and told her about Albert, though she did not much like to talk to her—­she looked so penetratingly at her out of her round, near-sighted eyes, which seemed always keeping a watch on the tip of her nose.  And Mrs. Ferret, with her jerky voice, and a smile that was meant to be an expression of mingled cheerfulness and intelligence, but which expressed neither, said:  “Is your brother a Christian?”

And Katy said he was a dear, dear fellow, but she didn’t know as he was a church-member.

“Does he hold scriptural views?  You know so many people in colleges are not evangelical.”

Mrs. Ferret had a provoking way of pronouncing certain words unctuously—­she said “Chrishchen” “shcripcherral,” and even in the word evangelical she made the first e very hard and long.

And when little Katy could not tell whether Albert held “shcripcherral” views or not, and was thoroughly tired of being quizzed as to whether she “really thought Albert had a personal interest in religion,” she made an excuse to run away into the chamber of Mrs. Morrow, Mrs. Ferret’s mother, who was an invalid—­Mrs. Ferret said “inva_leed_,” for the sake of emphasis.  The old lady never asked impertinent questions, never talked about “shcripcherral” or “ee-vangelical” views, but nevertheless breathed an atmosphere of scriptural patience and evangelical fortitude and Christian victory over the world’s tribulations.  Little Katy couldn’t have defined, the difference between the two in words; she never attempted it but once, and then she said that Mrs. Ferret was like a crabapple, and her mother like a Bartlett pear.