Tip got on better at home than anywhere else; he had not so many temptations. He had been such a lawless, reckless boy, that they had all learned to leave him very much to himself, and, as not a great deal of his time was spent there, his trials at home were not many. As for Kitty, she did not cease to wonder what had happened to Tip; she perhaps felt the difference more than any one else, for it had been the delight of his life to tease her. Now, from the time that he gathered his books, with the first sound of the school-bell, and hurried up the hill, until he returned at night, ready to split wood, hoe in the garden, or do any of the dozen things that he had never been known to do before, he was a never-failing subject of thought and wonderment to her. Watching him closely, the only thing she could finally settle on as the cause of the change which she found in him was, that he now went every Sabbath morning to the Sabbath school. The mystery must be hidden there. Having decided that matter, Kitty speedily resolved that she would go there herself, and see what they did. Many were the kind hearts that had tried to coax her into that same Sabbath school, and had failed. But this Saturday afternoon's gazing out of the window, with a wonderfully sober face, had ended in her exclaiming,-- "I say, mother, I want a needle and thread." "What do you want with a needle and thread?" asked Mrs. Lewis, stirring away at some gruel in a tin basin, and not even glancing up. "I want to mend my dress; it's torn this way and that, and looks awful. I want some green thread, the colour of this wide stripe." Now for a minute the gruel was forgotten, and Mrs. Lewis looked at Kitty in amazement. "Dear me!" she said at last; "I don't know what will happen next. It can't be possible that you are going to work to mend your own dress without being scolded about it for a week, and then made to do it." "Yes, I am, too; I ain't going to look like a rag-bag another hour. And I'm going to wash out my sun-bonnet and iron it; then I mean to go over to that Sunday school to-morrow. I ain't heard any singing since I was born, as I know of, and I mean to." The gruel began to burn, and Mrs. Lewis turned to it again, saying nothing, but thinking a great deal. Once she used to go to Sabbath school herself, when she was Kitty's age; and she didn't have to mend her dress first, either; she used to be dressed freshly and neatly, every Sabbath morning, by her mother's own careful hands. She poured the gruel into a bowl, and then went over to her workbox. "Here's a needle and thread," she said at last, drawing out a snarl of green thread from the many snarls in her box. "Mend your dress if you want to, and I'll wash out your bonnet for you towards night, when I get that vest done." It was Kitty's turn to be astonished now. She had not expected help from her mother.