"Father," whispered Kate, after a while, as one wishing to share confidences, for there must be something to tell, "where are you?" "You wish to know? Well, all day I 've been fishing down the stream, and am coming home, very tired, very dirty, very happy, and I meet my mother just outside those trees. I am boasting of the fish that I have caught, none of which, I 'm sure, can be less than half a pound. She is rating me for my appearance and beseeching me to keep at a distance. Then I go home and down into the vaulted kitchen, where Janet's mother gives me joyous welcome, and produces dainties saved from dinner for my eating. The trouts are now at biggest only a quarter of a pound, for they have to be cooked as a final course, but those that were hooked and escaped are each a pound, except one in the hole below Lynedoch Bridge, which was two pounds to an ounce. Afterwards I make a brave attempt to rehearse the day in the gunroom to Sandie, who first taught me to cast a line, and fall fast asleep, and, being shaken up, sneak off to bed, creeping slowly up the stair, where the light is falling, to the little room above yours, where, as I am falling over, I seem to hear my mother's voice as in this sighing of the wind. Ah me, what a day it was! And you, Kit?" "Oh, I was back in the convent with my nuns, and Sister Flora was trying to teach me English grammar in good French, and I was correcting her in bad French, and she begins to laugh because it is all so droll. 'I am Scotch, and I teach you English all wrong, and you tell me what I ought to say in French which is all wrong; let us go into the garden,' for she was a perfect love, and always covered my faults. I am sitting in the arbour, and the Sister brings a pear that has fallen. 'I do not think it is wicked,' she says, and I say it is simply a duty to eat up fallen pears, and we laugh again. As we sit, they are singing in the chapel, and I hear 'Ave Maria, ora pro nobis.' Then I think of you, and the tears will come to my eyes, and I try to hide my face, but the Sister understands and comforts me. 'Your father is a gallant gentleman, and the good God pities you, and will keep him in danger,' and I fondle the Sister, and wonder whether any more pears have fallen. How peaceful it is within that high wall, which is rough and forbidding outside, but inside it is hung with greenery, and among the leaves I see pears and peaches. But I missed you, dad," and Kate touched her father, for they had a habit of just touching each other gently when together. "Do you really think we have been in India, and that you have a dozen medals, and I am . . . an old maid?" "Certainly not, Kit, a mere invention--we are boy and girl, and . . . we 'll go on to the view."