Page:Wha Katy Did Next - Coolidge (1886).djvu/321

 disappointed, should you consider me a perfect wretch, if I went home now instead of in the autumn?"

Katy was too much astonished to reply.

"I am grown such a coward, I am so knocked up and weakened by what I suffered in Rome, that I find I cannot face the idea of going on to Germany and Switzerland alone, without Ned to take care of me. You are a perfect angel, dear, and I know that you would do all you could to make it easy for me, but I am such a fool that I do not dare. I think my nerves must have given way," she continued half tearfully; "but the very idea of shifting for myself for five months longer makes me so miserably homesick that I cannot endure it. I dare say I shall repent afterward, and I tell myself now how silly it is; but it's no use,—I shall never know another easy moment till I have Amy safe again in America and under your father's care."

"I find," she continued after another little pause, "that we can go down with Ned to