"Ach," said Katy with a deep sigh, "when I am through the Millerstown school, I should like to go to a big school and learn _everything_!"
"Listen to her once!" cried Bevy Schnepp with pride.
"I am already in the next to the highest class," explained Katy. "And our teacher, he is not a very good one. He wants to be English and a teacher ought to be English, but he is werry Germaner than the scholars. He said to us in school, 'We are to have nothing but English here, _do you versteh_?' That is exactly the way he said it to us. He says lots of words that are not English. I want to be English. I--"
"Just listen now!" cried Bevy again, her hands piled high with dishes.
"I want to be well educated," finished Katy with glowing cheeks.
"And what would you do when you were educated?" asked the governor.
"It would be no use having an education in Millerstown," answered Katy with conviction. "You have no idea how slow Millerstown is."
"Perhaps to Phildel'phy," answered Katy. "Perhaps I would be a missionary to Africay."
Strange sounds issued from the throats of Katy's kin.
"You are sure you could do nothing in Millerstown with an education?" asked the governor.
"It is nothing to do here," explained Katy. "You can walk round Millerstown a whole evening and you don't hear anything and you don't see anything."
"Would she like _murders_?" demanded Bevy Schnepp.
"You go in the store and Caleb Stemmel and Danny Koser are too dumb and lazy even to read the paper, and Sarah Ann Mohr is hemming and everybody else is sleeping. The married people sit round and don't say anything, and--"
"Do you want them to _fight_?" Bevy was not discouraged by being ignored.
"You think it would be better to be a missionary?" said the governor.
"It would be better to be _anything_," declared Katy fervently. "I _cannot stand_ Millerstown!" Katy clasped her hands and looked into the face of her distinguished relative. "Oh, please, please make them send me away to a big school! I prayed for it!" added Katy.
Over Katy's head the eyes of her elders met. The older folk thought of the little girl who might have been something different, the squire remembered the journeys he had planned in his youth and the years he had waited to take them.