"I took you first of all to please Gwethyn, you precious!" she would say, kissing his silky head; "but now you're like my own, and what I'll do when I've got to give you up I don't know!"
Gwethyn, ignorant of the fickle Tony's lightly transferred allegiance, would ask eagerly for news of him each morning. She kept a snapshot of him on her dressing-table, and urged Githa to take the earliest opportunity of smuggling him to school for a day. But Githa, under the plea of the gardener's lack of connivance, and fear of Mrs. Franklin's wrath, always managed to find some excuse, and put the matter off to a future date.
The Marsdens had been again to the Grange with Miss Aubrey, and had finished their sketches of the dovecot. It was a pretty subject, and the result was quite successful. Katrine, contemplating her canvas in the studio on the following afternoon, was frankly pleased.
"We're both improving," she said to Gwethyn (the two girls had the room to themselves for once). "I like Miss Aubrey's style of teaching immensely. It's just what I wanted. She's helped me enormously. By the by, I lost my best penknife at the Grange yesterday. I must have dropped it somewhere by my camp-stool."
"What a nuisance! But you have another?"
"Not so good. I don't mean to abandon that dear little pearl-handled one. Will you come with me now, and we'll go and look for it?"
"Right-o! The Grange is out of bounds, but who cares?"
"Certainly I don't! Mrs. Franklin's rules are ridiculous for a girl of my age. Surely I can go and fetch my penknife? Besides, we needn't go by the road. If we climb the fence in the orchard we can cut across the fields as the crow flies, and get into the lane by the big gate of the Grange."
"I'm your girl! Let's toddle off at once. If any one croaks I'm sure we can call the fields within bounds."
"I'm not going to be bound by bounds. Mrs. Franklin is a bounder!" retorted Katrine grandly.