"Bessie is my name," answered Bessie Challoner.
"Do you mind my calling it to you? I like Challoner awfully, and if I were to say Challoner without the Miss it might do, but Miss is so stiff. I hope I may be Kitty to you, and then you won't object to being Bessie to me."
"Not a bit," answered Bessie heartily; "but we are a little late, and had better walk on as fast as we can."
Gwin Harley lived in a beautiful house about two miles away, and the girls turned down a path which led across some fields in the direction of Harley Grove. The time of year was toward the end of May, and the weather was perfect.
Kitty, who had been silent for a time, now stood in the middle of the field, threw both her hands to her sides, let her parasol drop on the ground, and opened her mouth wide.
"Have you gone quite mad?" asked Alice in a severe tone.
"Mad is it?" said Kitty; "not I. I am taking in some of the air." Here she began to breathe very deeply and with considerable noise. "Why, my ducky girls, the pair of you, I was fairly suffocated in that bandbox of a house; now the breeze here is fine and fresh, and I want to fill my lungs. Is there any objection?"
"Oh, none I am sure," answered Bessie; "but you really did look most extraordinary."
"I am glad no one was passing at the moment," said Alice. "What would they have thought?"
"Does it matter what they think?" asked Kitty. "We never mind what anyone thinks of us in Ireland. Ah, the dear old place; how I pine for it! There now, my lungs are full, and we can go on again."