Alvin's lips parted. He felt not so much gratitude as amazement.
"Millerstown will be crazy when it finds I am going away!" cried Alvin with delight.
"They must never know how you go!" said Katy in alarm. "You must not tell them how you go!"
"They think my father has money." Here was a solution. "They do not know he has given it all to detectives. They think he has it hidden away. Millerstown is very dumb."
"You must get a catalogue from the school, Alvin, and you must send in your name. That is the first."
"I will," promised Alvin. "I will do it right away. It is a loan, Katy, and I will pay it back. It will not be hard to earn the money to pay it back!"
The sound of a descending footstep on the stairway frightened them, as though they had been plotting evil. Alvin went swiftly and quietly out the brick walk, and Katy sat still. When Bevy came to the kitchen door, Katy sat on the lowest step, where Bevy had left her, her elbows on her knees, her chin in her hands.
"You are not to come in yet," said Bevy. "I just came to get a drink. Your gran'mom is sleeping."
"Yes, well," answered Katy, keeping her voice steady by great effort. She did not wish to move. She wished to think and think. If Alvin had omitted an expression of thanks, she held no grudge against him, had not, indeed, even observed the omission. Here was an outlet from prison; here was something to be, to do! She would cheerfully have earned by the labor of her hands enough to send Alvin Koehler to school. After such a foolish, generous pattern was Katy made in her youth; thus, lightly, with a beating, happy heart, did she put herself in bondage.
"I will educate Alvin," said Katy. "If I cannot do one thing, I can do another."
Alvin Koehler climbed the hill. His heart did not throb as rapidly as Katy's, but Alvin, too, was very happy. Alvin was not yet possessed by an overwhelming desire for an education; but he saw a new suit and at least three neckties. Above that delectable goal, his ambition did not rise.
When he reached the little white house on the hillside and lifted the latch of the door, he could not get in. After he had pounded and called, his terror growing each moment greater, he tried the window. From there his father's strong hands pushed him so suddenly that he fell on his back into the soft soil of the garden. Poor William Koehler had come to confuse the woman with horns with his harmless son.