Catherine had borne three children without adding a touch of the matron to her slender, long body. In knickers and green smock, her smooth brown hair dragging its heavy coil low down her slim neck, she looked young and strong and like the birch tree under which she stood. There was even the same suggestion of quiet which a breath might dispel, of poise which might at a moment tremble into agitation. The suggestion lay in her long gray eyes, with eagerness half veiled by thin lids and dark lashes, or perhaps in the long, straight lips, too firmly closed.
A shout came up the path between the alders, and Letty scrambled to her feet.
"Daddy!" she shrieked, and headed down the path, Catherine loping easily after her.
There they were, Charles and the two older children, Spencer carrying a string of flounders, Marian with the fish lines hugged under her arm, and Charles between them, each of his hands caught in one of theirs. They stopped as Letty pelted toward them.
"Fishy! Sweet fishy!" Letty reached for the string. Spencer drew it sternly away, and Letty reached again, patting the flat cold flounder on the end.
"Letty, you'll get all dirty and fish smelly." Spencer disapproved.
"Sweet fishy—" Letty's howl broke off as her father swung her up to his shoulder.
"Fine supper we got, Mother," said Charles, grinning.