"Girls will be girls, Mrs. Rimmer," said Eager soothingly, "and Kattie's a girl to be proud of. She's blossomed out like a rose."
"A'm feart she's a bit flighty, an' who she gets it from I dunnot know. Not fro' me, I'm sure, nor from her feyther neither."
"Here she is," said Jim. "I hear the oars." And he jumped up and went to the door, and in another minute Kattie came in, all rosy with her exertions in the nipping air, and prettier than ever.
They chatted together for a while, Kattie's sparkling eyes roving appreciatively over the wonderful changes in her former playmates, and a great wish in her heart that the girls up at Wyvveloe could see her on such friendly terms with two such stalwart warriors.
When they got up to go she went out with them, and offered to put them across the Mere in the boat.
"Yo're going back to London?" asked Kattie of Jim, as they threaded their way through the sand-hills.
"We go back to-morrow. They don't give us long holidays, you see."
"London's a grand place, they say."
"In some ways, Kattie, but in most ways I'd sooner live at Carne."
"Ech, I'd give a moight to see London," she sighed.