She thoroughly enjoyed herself in a wood like this. She did not feel in the least lonely, although she would have found herself sadly alone in a busy street of a great city.
Here, she was acquainted with everything she saw. There was company for her on every side. She had not been in the habit of passing the trees and the bushes, the lichens and ferns, and the flowers and mosses as if they were merely people hurrying up and down the street. She had stopped and made their acquaintance, and now she knew them all, and they were her good friends, excepting a few, such as the poison-vines, and here and there a plant or reptile, with which she was never on terms of intimacy.
She would often sit and swing on a low-bending grape-vine, that hung between two lofty trees, sometimes singing, and sometimes listening to the insects that hummed around her, and all the while as happy a Kate as any Kate in the world.
It was here, on the grape-vine swing, that Harry found her, the day after his little affair with George Purvis.
"Why, Harry!" she cried, "I thought you were having a meeting.
"There's nothing to meet about," said Harry, seating himself on a big moss-covered root near Kate's swing.
"There will be when the telegraph things come," said Kate.
"Oh, yes, there'll be enough to do then, but it seems as if they were never coming. And I've been thinking about something, Kate. It strikes me that, perhaps, it would be better for you to hold only one office."
"Why? Don't I do well enough?" asked Kate, quickly, stopping herself very suddenly in her swinging.
"Oh, yes! you do better than any one else could. But, you see, the other fellows—I mean the Board—may think that some of them ought to have an office. I'd give them one of mine, but none of them would do for Engineer. They don't know enough about the business."