"If--your father gives me permission," Katherine replied, with heightened color. "Now I must go, for I am sure the bell will ring in a few minutes." "Will you--may I kiss you before you go?" begged the girl, who was used to much petting from everyone, and lifting her pale face to the bright one looking down upon her and which seemed to radiate love. "Yes, indeed," said Katherine, and heartily returned the caress. "Now, good-by," she added, and, with a respectful bow to her principal, left the room, whispering to herself as she tried to put out of thought the misshapen little figure in the chair: "God never made one of His children imperfect. He made man upright, and there is no power apart from God." CHAPTER VI. MATERIA MEDICA AND MIRACLES. The days and weeks sped swiftly by, Katherine gradually becoming mentally acclimated, so to speak, amid an adverse environment. She did not make many acquaintances, for most of the students still held aloof from her; but she was content, even happy, for, with a stanch friend in Miss Reynolds, whom she found most congenial, and with whom she spent much of her leisure time, she did not miss other companionship so much. Sadie, her roommate, was an affectionate and kind-hearted girl; but being of an indolent, ease-loving temperament, she was often a trial to Katherine, who loved order and system and believed it to be the duty of everyone to maintain them. The girl had often attempted to lean upon her in the preparation of some of her lessons, now and then asking to see her problems in mathematics and her translations in German and Latin. But this was something that Katherine would not lend herself to, except in so far as, occasionally, to remind her of some forgotten point in a rule that would suggest a way to work out the knotty problem, or to give her a cue as to case or tense, that would assist in the translation. While she shrank from wronging her, even in thought, there were times when she felt sure that she had taken advantage of her absence from the room to look over her papers and copy from them. "I cannot let you see my work," she said one day, when, after repeated but unheeded hints, Sadie had asked her outright to allow her to look at her problems, saying that she had not had time to do them for herself. "It would not be honest," she continued, determined to settle the matter once for all; "it would simply be showing Miss Reynolds my work and claiming it as your own." "Now I call that downright mean and disobliging," Sadie returned, with an injured air, but flushing uncomfortably and forgetting for the moment the many other acts of kindness Katherine had shown her. "Of course, I don't expect you to do it every day, but just this once, so that I can make a good showing in the class, could do no harm; and, honey, I'll promise to spend all my recreation time, this afternoon, going over the work for myself."