“My, but I’m glad you like them, Mother,” said Kate.  “They are all I’ve got to show for ten years of my life.”

“Not by a long shot, Katie,” said Mrs. Bates.  “Life has made a real woman of you.  I kept watchin’ you to-day comin’ over; an’ I was prouder ’an Jehu of you.  It’s a debatable question whether you have thrown away your time and your money.  I say you’ve got something to show for it that I wish to God the rest of my children had.  I want you should brace your back, and stiffen your neck, and make things hum here.  Get a carpenter first.  Fix the house the way it will be most convenient and comfortable.  Then paint and paper, and get what new things you like, in reason —­ of course, in reason —­ and then I want you should get all of us clothes so’s there ain’t a noticeable difference between us and the others when we come together here or elsewhere.  Put in a telephone; they’re mighty handy, and if you can scrape up a place —­ I washed in Nancy Ellen’s tub a few weeks ago.  I never was wet all over at once before in my life, and I’m just itching to try it again.  I say, let’s have it, if it knocks a fair-sized hole in a five-hundred-dollar bill.  An’ if we had the telephone right now, we could call up folks an’ order what we want without ever budgin’ out of our tracks.  Go up ahead, Katie, I’ll back you in anything you can think of.  It won’t hurt my feelings a mite if you can think of one or two things the rest of them haven’t got yet.  Can’t you think of something that will lay the rest of them clear in the shade?  I just wish you could.  Now, I’m going to bed.”

Kate went with her mother, opened her bed, pulled out the pins, and brushed her hair, drew the thin cover over her, and blew out the light.  Then she went past the bed on her way to the door, and stooping, she kissed her mother for the first time since she could remember.

Then she lighted a lamp, hunted a big sheet of wrapping paper, and sitting down beside the living room table, she drew a rough sketch of the house.  For hours she pored over it, and when at last she went to bed, on the reverse of the sheet she had a drawing that was quite a different affair; yet it was the same house with very few and easily made changes that a good contractor could accomplish in a short time.  In the morning, she showed these ideas to her mother who approved all of them, but still showed disappointment visibly.

“That’s nothing but all the rest of them have,” she said.  “I thought you could think up some frills that would be new, and different.”

“Well,” said Kate, “would you want to go to the expense of setting up a furnace in the cellar?  It would make the whole house toasty warm; it would keep the bathroom from freezing in cold weather; and make a better way to heat the water.”

“Now you’re shouting!” cried Mrs. Bates.  “That’s it!  But keep still.  Don’t you tell a soul about it, but go on and do it, Katie.  Wade right in!  What else can you think of?”