Back in her own room she laughed bitterly, while two hot tears slipped down her cheeks. "_Promise_! Poor thing! and she believes me! She thinks my word is as good as my bond. So it is—and neither of them is worth a rush," she assailed herself. No, she had forgotten. She was telling the truth about the preserves, at least. Mrs. Stewson was going to let her have a "rule." But the false impression she had deliberately conveyed about the caller still "stuck in her crop," as Martha would have said. And yet, what right had her grandmother or any one else, to tie her hand and foot, so she must resort to subterfuge if she wanted to move a muscle? It wasn’t fair that one life should be crippled to serve the whim of another. If her grandmother insisted on cutting her off from all natural pleasures, let her take the consequences. She fell asleep at last, nursing her sense of injury, brooding over her wrongs. The next morning, while the casual Eunice was clearing the breakfast table, Katherine heard a sound outside, which caused her to hurry to the window. The sound was familiar, but the time for it unusual. The doctor’s car was not due at Crewesmere so early in the day. Yet there it was, and, as Katherine gazed, from it issued, as if in installments, Mrs. Slawson, a small boy, a big girl, and—a huge, granite-ware preserving-kettle. In less than a minute the _tempo_ of the house was changed. Things moved _vivace_. "Sammy, you go out with this basket, an’ strip them trees as fast as you can put. Cora, you show’m where to go, after Miss Crewe she tells you, that’s a good girl. Eunice, get me every one o’ them perserve-jars off’n the top pantry-shelf, an’ when you wash’m, see the water’s good an’ hot, but not so’s it’ll crack the glass. We’ll need them scales, Miss Katherine. I knew you had’m, or I’d ’a’ brought my own. If you watch me measurin’, an’ write down what the perportions are, an’ how I handle’m, you’ll have a ’rule’ for future use, which, if it never took a prize like Mrs. Peckett’s, certaintly never poisoned anybody yet, that ever et it, so far as _I_ know." It was wonderful how the load lifted from Katherine’s heart. "I don’t know how it is, Mrs. Slawson," she said at length, "but whenever you’re here, I feel about twice as strong and brave, as at any other time. It isn’t alone that you _do_ so much, but you make me think I can do things too; things I know I’m not equal to, otherwise."