What Katy Did

Katy Carr is careless, quick-tempered and the eldest of six, and a fall from a swing she was forbidden to touch leaves her in bed for four years. Susan Coolidge wrote it in 1872 from a family she knew, and Cousin Helen's lessons in the School of Pain are Victorian to the bone. What survives is the household — six children running an ungoverned house — and Katy's temper, which the illness does not cure.