"And the ladies in the stores are so fine, and so polite, and they show you everything," said Katy. "When Louisa Kuhns went to Allentown she said, 'the people are me so unpolite, they go always bumping and bumping and they don't even say uh!' That is not true. I do not believe there is anywhere in the world a politer place than Allentown.
"Louisa—" No gap between subjects halted Katy's speech; she leaped it with a bound. "Louisa is very dumb. Now I do not believe myself that a person can learn everything. But you can train your mind so that you can understand everything if it is explained to you. You must keep your mind all the time busy and you must be very humble. Louisa said that poetry was dumb. Louisa cannot even understand, 'Where, oh, where are the visions of morning?' Louisa thinks everything must be real. I said to her I would be ashamed to talk that way. The realer poetry is the harder it is. But Louisa! Ach, my! Gran'mom! The teacher said Louisa should write 'pendulum' in a sentence, and Louisa wrote 'Pendulum Franklin is dead'!"
"Do you like poetry, Katy?" asked Grandmother Gaumer.
"Some," answered Katy. "It is not the fault of the poetry that I cannot understand it all. I want to understand everything. I do not mean, gran'mom, that you cannot be good unless you understand everything. But there is more in this world than being good. Sarah Ann is good, but Sarah Ann has a pretty slow time in this world."
"Sarah Ann does many kind things."
"But the squire and gran'pop do more because they are smarter," said Katy triumphantly. "When the people want advice, do they go to Sarah Ann? They come to the squire or to gran'pop!"
Grandmother Gaumer smiled. Sometimes Katy talked in borrowed phrase about a "larger vision" or "preparation for a larger life."
"Millerstown!" said Katy with a long sigh and a shake of the head. "I could not stay forever in Millerstown, gran'mom. Think of the Sunday School picnics with the red mint candy on the cakes and how Susannah and Sarah Knerr try to have the highest layer cakes, and each wants the preacher to eat. Think of the Copenhagen, gran'mom, and the Bingo and the Jumbo, gran'mom!" In derision Katy began to sing, "A certain farmer."
Grandmother Gaumer leaned forward in her chair. A sense of uneasiness overwhelmed her, though Katy had heard nothing. "Listen, Katy!"
There was nothing to be heard; Grandfather Gaumer had fallen; beside him knelt his brother and the doctor; aghast Bevy flung her arms above her head; all were as yet silent.