“But I can’t.  I am ever so sorry, Miss O’Hara.”

“You mean that you won’t come when I have called for you?”

“I am with Miss Weldon at present.”

“Be sensible, dear,” said Mrs. Weldon at that moment.  “You don’t quite understand our manners in this country.  However attached we may be to a person, we don’t enter a strange house and snatch that person out of it.  It isn’t our way; and I don’t think—­you will forgive me for saying it—­that your way is as nice as ours.  Be persuaded, dear, and join Cassandra and Ruth, and have a happy time.”

Kathleen’s face had turned crimson.  She looked from Mrs. Weldon to Cassandra, and then she looked at Ruth.  Suddenly her eyes brimmed up with tears.

“I don’t think I can ever change my way,” she said.  “I am sorry if I am rude and not understood.  Perhaps, after all, I am mistaken, about Ruth; perhaps she is not my real proper affinity.  I am a very unhappy girl.  I wish I could go back to mother and to my dad.  I shouldn’t be lonely if I were in the midst of the mountains, and if I could see the streams and the blue sea.  I don’t know why Aunt Katie O’Flynn sent me to this horrid place.  I wish I was back in the old country.  They don’t talk as you talk in the old country and they don’t look as you look.  If you put your heart at the feet of a body in old Ireland, that body doesn’t kick it away.  I will go.  I don’t want your tea.  I don’t want anything that you have to offer me.  I don’t like any of you.  I am sorry if you think me rude, but I can’t help myself.  Good-bye.”

“No, no; stay.  Stay and visit with me, and tell me about the old country and the sea and the mountains,” said Mrs. Weldon.

But Kathleen shook her head fiercely, and the next moment left the room.

“Poor, strange little girl,” thought the good woman.  “I see she is about to heap unhappiness on herself and others.  What is to be done for her?”

“I like her,” said Ruth.  “She is very impulsive, but she is------”

“Oh, yes,” said Cassandra, “she has a good heart, of course; but I foresee that she is up to all sorts of mischief.  She doesn’t understand our ways.  Why did she leave her own country?”

Ruth was silent.  She looked wistful.

“Come along, Ruthie; we will be late.  I have no end of schemes in my head.  I mean to help you.  You will win that scholarship.”

Ruth smiled.  Presently she and Cassandra were crossing the common arm-in-arm.  In the interest of their own conversation they forgot Kathleen.

When that young lady left the house she ran back to the Tennants’.

“I will write to dad to-night and tell him that I can’t stay,” she thought.  “Oh, dear, my heart is in my mouth!  I shall have a broken heart if this sort of thing goes on.”

She entered the house.  There sat Mrs. Tennant with a great basket of stockings before her.  The remains of a rough-looking tea were on the table.  The boys had disappeared.