“Oh, yes! and I have always been shut up by myself! You’ll teach me all that other girls do, and we will be friends.”
And suddenly the kitten sprang, and throwing her arms round Emberance, hugged her, and kissed her with irresistible warmth.
All the kindliness of Emberance’s nature awoke at the appeal, and all lurking sense of their relative positions yielded at the clasp of Katharine’s hands, and then at the warm touch of her lips.
“I will love you, Katharine,” she said, earnestly, “and friends we will be, I promise.”
The words did not mean nearly so much after all, to Katharine who knew no reason to prevent their friendship, as to the speaker, but they were entirely satisfactory to her, and as she subsided on to the floor at Emberance’s feet, she looked up at her and laughed joyfully.
She seemed so youthful a creature that Emberance felt as if she must go back to old methods of making acquaintance and begin, “How many lessons do you do?”—“Tell me something about yourself,” she said, wishing to find out what Katharine knew of the family history.
“There’s nothing to tell, I have lived all my life shut up at Applehurst. Uncle Kingsworth says mamma came away from Kingsworth because some very sad things happened there. I suppose it was my father dying so young, but that’s a long while ago, and we can begin fresh.”
“Katharine,” interposed Emberance who had been watching the street from the window, “here is my mother, she is coming to call on yours, let us go into the drawing-room.”
“Oh yes, I should like to see a morning call. No one ever called but the Rector and old Miss Evesham, and I want to see Aunt Ellen too.”
Emberance followed her as she jumped up and ran into the drawing-room, with considerably more anxiety as to the result of the interview, to which Mrs James Kingsworth had worked herself up, with much doubt and disinclination.