Still a strain of pity ran through her meditations. Was life worth living, spent as his was? How far had his nature been warped by his wife's desertion? It was an extraordinary experience to Katherine, this packing up of her belongings to quit her home. She took as little as she could help, to keep up the idea that she was entering on a very temporary engagement; besides, as she meant to adhere rigidly to her right of a weekly visit to her mother, she could always get what she wanted. After Mrs. Liddell, Katherine found it hardest to part with the boys, specially little Charlie, whose guardian and champion she had constituted herself. Her sister-in-law had rather an irritating effect upon her, of which she was a little ashamed, and whenever she had spoken sharply, which she did occasionally, she was ready to atone for it by doing some extra service, so that, on the whole, the pretty little widow got a good deal more out of her sister than out of her mother-in-law. But meditations, resolutions, regrets, and preparations notwithstanding, the day of Katherine's departure arrived. It was a bright, glowing afternoon, and the Thursday fixed for the boating party. Mrs. Liddell junior had expended much eloquence to no purpose, as she well knew it would be, in trying to persuade her sister-in-law to postpone the commencement of what the little widow was pleased to call her "penal servitude," and accompany her to Twickenham. She departed, however, without her, looking her very best, and uttering many promises to come and see Katie soon, to try her powers of pleasing on that dreadful old uncle of ours, to bring the dear boys, and see if they would not cut out their aunty, etc. Mrs. Liddell and her daughter were most thankful to have the last few hours together, and yet they said little, and that chiefly respecting past days which they had enjoyed together--little excursions on the Elbe or in the neighborhood of Florence; a couple of months once passed at Siena, which was a mental epoch to Katherine, who was then about fifteen; promises to write; and tender queries on the mother's side if she had remembered this or that. The little boys clung to her, Charlie in tears, Cecil very solemn. Both had taken up the sort of camera-obscura image of their elders' views which children contrive to obtain so mysteriously without hearing anything distinct concerning them, and both considered "Uncle John" a sort of modern ogre, only restrained by the policeman outside from making a daily meal of the nearest infant school, and sure to gobble up aunty some day. Charlie trembled at the thought; Cecil pondered profoundly how, by the judicious arrangement of a trap-door in the middle of his room, he might carry out the original idea of Jack the Giant-Killer.