"It's very good o' yo'."
"But I came really to look for Jim Carron. They told me he had come down this way, and I thought he might have called in to see you."
"No. I havena seen owt of him."
"And you're all alone? Where's everybody?"
"Th' mester's at his work--God keep him; it's a bad, black night!--and Seth--he's away."
"And where's my friend Kattie? She ought not to leave you all alone like this."
"Ech, I'm used to it. 'Oo's always slipping out. I dunnot know who----" she began, with a quite unusual fretfulness, which showed him she had been worrying over it.
And then the door opened and Kattie came in, ruffled somewhat with the south-west wind, which had whipped the colour into her face. With a bit of cherry ribbon at her throat, and another bit in her hair, and her eyes sparkling in the lamplight, she looked uncommonly pretty.
"How they all grow up!" thought Eager to himself. "Here's another who will set the village boys by the ears; and it seems no time since she was a child running about with scarce a rag to her back!"
"Mr. Eager?" said Kattie in surprise.