All winter Kate brooded, barely managing to keep alive, and the children in school.  As spring opened, she shook herself, arose, and went to work.  It was not planned, systematic, effective, Bates work.  Piecemeal she did anything she saw needed the doing.  The children helped to make garden and clean the yard.  Then all of them went out to Aunt Ollie’s and made a contract to plant and raise potatoes and vegetables on shares.  They passed a neglected garden on the way, and learning that the woman of the house was ill, Kate stopped and offered to tend it for enough cords of windfall wood to pay her a fair price, this to be delivered in mid-summer.

With food and fire assured, Kate ripped up some of George’s clothing, washed, pressed, turned, and made Adam warm clothes for school.  She even achieved a dress for Polly by making a front and back from a pair of her father’s trouser legs, and setting in side pieces, a yoke and sleeves from one of her old skirts.  George’s underclothing she cut down for both of the children; then drew another check for taxes and second-hand books.  While she was in Hartley in the fall paying taxes, she stopped at a dry goods store for thread, and heard a customer asking for knitted mittens, which were not in stock.  After he had gone, she arranged with the merchant for a supply of yarn which she carried home and began to knit into mittens such as had been called for.  She used every minute of leisure during the day, she worked hours into the night, and soon small sums began coming her way.  When she had a supply of teamster’s heavy mittens, she began on fancy coloured ones for babies and children, sometimes crocheting, sometimes using needles.  Soon she started both children on the rougher work with her.  They were glad to help for they had a lively remembrance of one winter of cold and hunger, with no Christmas.  That there were many things she might have done that would have made more money with less exertion Kate never seemed to realize.  She did the obvious thing.  Her brain power seemed to be on a level with that of Adam and Polly.

When the children began to carry home Christmas talk, Kate opened her mouth to say the things that had been said to her as a child; then tightly closed it.  She began getting up earlier, sitting up later, knitting feverishly.  Luckily the merchant could sell all she could furnish.  As the time drew nearer, she gathered from the talk of the children what was the deepest desire of their hearts.  One day a heavy wind driving ice-coated trees in the back yard broke quite a large limb from a cherry tree.  Kate dragged it into the woodhouse to make firewood.  She leaned it against the wall to wait until the ice melted, and as it stood there in its silvery coat, she thought how like a small tree the branch was shaped, and how pretty it looked.  After the children had gone to school the next day she shaped it with the hatchet and saw, and fastened it in a small box.  This