"Ech, but you do wear a lot o' clothes!" jerked Kattie, the moment they got outside.
"It must be jolly to wear so few," said Gracie enviously. "When I've lived here a bit perhaps I can too. You see I've always been used to wearing a lot."
"They're gey pratty, but I'd liever not carry 'em."
"Is that your boat? Do you row it all by yourself?"
"O' course! I'll show you." And she sped down to the long-prowed shallop from which she had just landed, shoved it off, tumbled in, regardless of wet feet and display of bare leg, and sent the little craft bounding over the smooth dark mirror, her vivid little face sparkling with delight at this opportunity for the display of superior accomplishment.
Grade meanwhile danced with desire on the sedgy shore.
"Me too, Kattie! Come back and take me too! What a love of a little boat! And you row like a man."
"I can scull too," cried Kattie vauntingly, and drew in one oar and slipped the other over the stern and came wobbling back with a manly swing that seemed to Gracie to court disaster.
"I like the rowing best," she gasped, as she crawled cautiously in over the projecting prow. "Let me try one."
And thereafter they were friends.