Page:What Katy Did.djvu/150

138 than to have my little girls take pattern after her."

"It must be awful to be sick," soliloquized Katy, after Papa was gone. "Why, if I had to stay in bed a whole week—I should die, I know I should."

Poor Katy! It seemed to her, as it does to almost all young people, that there is nothing in the world so easy as to die, the moment things go wrong!

This conversation with Papa made Cousin Helen doubly interesting in Katy's eyes. "It was just like something in a book," to be in the same house with the heroine of a love-story so sad and sweet.

The play that afternoon was much interrupted, for every few minutes somebody had to run in and see if it wasn't four o'clock. The instant the hour came, all six children galloped up stairs.

"I think we'll tell stories this time," said Cousin Helen.

So they told stories. Cousin Helen's were the best of all. There was one of them about a robber, which sent delightful chills creeping down