"I'm going away; I can't stay, and oh please don't look for me; for I could not come back. It seems as though my heart was broken, and it nearly made me crazy to think that I was all alone in the world, except a wicked, cruel father. Oh, I never knew how much I loved you all, until I found that I was nothing--neither daughter nor sister. I have taken the twenty dollars in gold, and fifteen dollars that I saved from my teaching, and I will go some where and work for my living. I know it will grieve you, and that is all that has kept me from going before; but I could not stand it any longer; something made me go. Oh, please forgive me, and do not look for me. I love you all so much, and it nearly broke my heart to look at the girls, and think they were all sisters, and you their own mama, while I was nothing. Don't grieve for me, please, but do love me. "ERNESTINE." CHAPTER XIII. A YEAR LATER. Kathleen was sitting in the swing, and idly pushing a hole in the saw dust, with the toe of her shoe; while Katherine sat on a log hemming a handkerchief, a red rose stuck in her hair, and much thoughtfulness in her face. "I think it's too horrible to think about," said the former, suddenly, and with a vinegary aspect of countenance. "He may be nice," returned the latter, consolingly, though with much evident distaste to the fact. "Who cares, and then besides, I bet he isn't." "You mustn't bet." "I will. You may be nice, and proper, and so awfully prim, if you want to, but I sha'n't." "You're nearly fifteen." "Suppose I am. Besides I'm not; it's three months yet." "Well," said Kittie, after a pause, and turning a corner in her handkerchief with great nicety, "I suppose since it's settled, that he will be here in a few days. Bea has fixed his room so pretty." "Pooh! I bet he'll never notice it, and he'll be an everlasting bother, and we'll never have any more fun; and I'm going to tell him the minute he gets here, that I hate him; and I hope that'll make him happy and want to stay," exclaimed Kat vehemently. "Besides," continued Kittie, as placidly as though nothing was disturbing the serenity of her sister, "you see, my dear, how it will help mama." Any remark of a like character, would, at any time, reduce the girls from the most active rebellion to passive acquiescence; and Kat immediately lost her ferocious determination and looked reflective, as she recalled the dear face they loved, with its pale patient sweetness, and the gray hair that had all come into the brown locks within the last year, since Ernestine went away. "Well," she said in a moment, and beginning to swing, "I suppose it's all right, but I wish he wasn't so old. Twenty! my goodness! He'll be forever lecturing us and reading solemn books, because I know he's solemn; sick people always are, and everything will have to be poky and still to suit him, and I think it's abominable!"