She was looking straight at Helen, who shivered as she met an expression so unlike Katy, and so like to that a hunted deer might wear if its offspring were in danger. “Say, do you think they will?” she continued, shedding back with her thin hand the mass of tangled curls which had fallen about her eyes. “Whom do you mean by _they_?” Helen asked, coming near to her, and sitting down upon the bed. There was a resentful gleam in the blue eyes usually so gentle, as Katy answered, “_Whom_ do I mean? _His folks_, of course! They have been the instigators of every sorrow I have known since I left Silverton. Oh, Helen! never, never marry anybody who has _folks_, if you wish to be happy.” Helen could not repress a smile, though she pitied her sister, who continued, “I don’t mean father Cameron, nor Bell, for I believe they love me. Father does, I know, and Bell has helped me so often; but Mrs. Cameron and Juno, oh, Helen, you will never know what _they_ have been to me.” Since Helen came to New York there had been so much else to talk about that Katy had said comparatively little of the Camerons. Now, however there was no holding back on Katy’s part, and beginning with the first night of her arrival in New York, she told what is already known to the reader, exonerating Wilford in word, but dealing out full justice to his mother and Juno, the former of whom controlled him so completely. “I tried so hard to love her,” Katy said, “and if she had given me ever so little in return I would have been satisfied; but she never did—that is, when I hungered for it most, missing you at home, and the loving care which sheltered me in childhood. After the world took me into favor she began to caress me, but I was wicked enough to think it all came of selfishness. I know I am hard and bad, for when I was sick, Mrs. Cameron was really very kind, and I began to like her; but if she takes baby away I shall surely die.” “Where is baby to be sent?” Helen asked, and Katy answered, “Up the river, to a house which Father Cameron owns, and which is kept by a farmer’s family. I can’t trust Kirby. I do not like her. She keeps baby asleep too long, and acts so cross if I try to wake her, or hint that she looks unnatural. I cannot give baby to her care, with no one to look after her, though Wilford says I must.” Katy had never offered so violent opposition to any plan as she did now to that of sending her child away. “I can’t, I can’t,” she repeated constantly, and Mrs. Cameron’s call, made that afternoon, with a view to reconcile the matter, only made it worse, so that Wilford, on his return at night, felt a pang of self-reproach as he saw the drooping figure holding his child upon its lap and singing its lullaby in a plaintive voice, which told how sore was its heart.