All that day in which Albert Charlton had been riding from Red Owl Landing to Metropolisville, sweet Little Katy Charlton had been expecting him. Everybody called her _sweet_, and I suppose there was no word in the dictionary that so perfectly described her. She was not well-read, like Miss Minorkey; she was not even very smart at her lessons: but she was sweet. Sweetness is a quality that covers a multitude of defects. Katy's heart had love in it for everybody. She loved her mother; she loved Squire Plausaby, her step-father; she loved cousin Isa, as she called her step-father's niece; she loved--well, no matter, she would have told you that she loved nobody more than Brother Albert.
And now that Brother Albert was coming to the new home in the new land he had never seen before, Katy's heart was in her eyes. She would show him so many things he had never seen, explain how the pocket-gophers built their mounds, show him the nestful of flying-squirrels--had he ever seen flying-squirrels? And she would show him Diamond Lake, and the speckled pickerel among the water-plants. And she would point out the people, and entertain Albert with telling him their names and the curious gossip about them. It was so fine to know something that even Albert, with all his learning, did not know. And she would introduce Albert to _him_. Would Albert like _him_? Of course he would. They were both such _dear_ men.
And as the hours wore on, Katy grew more and more excited and nervous. She talked about Albert to her mother till she wearied that worthy woman, to whom the arrival of any one was an excuse for dressing if possible in worse taste than usual, or at least for tying an extra ribbon in her hair, and the extra ribbon was sure to be of a hue entirely discordant with the mutually discordant ones that preceded it. Tired of talking to her mother, she readily found an excuse to buy something--ribbons, or candles, or hair-pins, or dried apples--something kept in the very miscellaneous stock of the "Emporium," and she knew who would wait upon her, and who would kindly prolong the small transaction by every artifice in his power, and thus give her time to tell him about her Brother Albert. He would be so glad to hear about Albert. He was always glad to hear her tell about anybody or anything.