Where had Katie suddenly got so much money? and why did she so earnestly desire to keep the possession of it a secret? She _thought_ the answer to the latter question lay in her desire to surprise her mother, and was not at all conscious of another feeling that lay as yet quite dormant and unaroused. As to the former, that is easily answered. After cutting off the buttons of an old vest, just as the little girl was preparing to cut it in smaller pieces, the pocket opened, and out fluttered a crumpled paper, which on being opened proved to be a fifty-dollar bill. Some careless gentleman, no one could tell whom, no one could tell when, had stuffed it into the pocket and forgotten all about it. Strange that the vest should have gone through all the vicissitudes common to old clothes, worn possibly by a beggar, condemned to a dust-heap, fished out, sorted, sold, packed, sold again, and transported to the factory, passing through a dozen hands, to any one of whose owners the money would have been so useful, and there it had lain unnoticed till it fluttered out into the very hands of Katie Robertson, who needed it so much. What castles in the air the little girl built as she lay there in the twilight!--dresses and bonnets for her mother; new suits for each of the boys; a new tea-set, with table-cloth and napkins. Never in the world did a fifty-dollar bill buy half so much in reality as this one did in imagination; which, by the way, is a very pleasant way of spending money, since it does not at all diminish the amount, which may be all spent over and over again in a variety of ways. But strangely enough, while everything needed by the others, even to a new ribbon to tie round pussy's neck, was remembered, Katie's catalogue of articles to be bought contained nothing in the world for herself. CHAPTER VII. STRIFE AND VICTORY. No thought had as yet suggested itself to Katie concerning her right to the money which had thus come into her possession, and as she lay there planning the things she was going to get with it, she enjoyed to the full the dignity of ownership. How glad her mother would be when there was a decent water-pail in the house, plates enough of one kind to go round, and a table-cloth that was not nearly all darns! Then her mother should have a new shawl and bonnet, and each of the boys a straw hat and a bright necktie, and she would have something to put in the plate every Sunday in church, and to add to the missionary collection of the Sunday-school class. Perhaps, even, she could give something toward a present that the girls were talking of giving to Miss Eunice.