Zerah was wrapped up in her niece. She could not have loved her more dearly had Kitty been her own child. The hardness in the woman’s character gave way; the trouble she had undergone had softened and sweetened a nature really good and kind, but ruffled and soured by adverse circumstances and uncongenial associations. A great change had taken place in the opinion of the public in Coombe-in-Teignhead relative to Kitty. The general feeling was, that she had been hardly treated, in having a crime attributed to her of which she had been guiltless; that if she had been reserved in her manner, it was her way, and all folk were not constituted alike; that if she asked questions, no one was bound to answer them unless he liked, and if he couldn’t give the required information. Kitty was quiet’she harmed nobody. She had done Rose Ash a great favour in stepping out of the way when Jan Pooke was inclined to “make a fool of himself wi’ her.” She was worth three thousand pounds for certain, and it was said that her father was piling up a fortune in Torquay. Coombe Cellars would ultimately be hers, as well as the little bit of ground about it’or rather, at the back of it, which was what remained of the farm. And she had been grown in Coombe, she had foothold there, and “all knew the worst o’ her, and that weren’t so cruel bad.” Finally, and conclusively, Mr. Puddicombe pronounced in her favour. So public opinion veered round, and was prepared to make much of Kate. The worst that could be spoken of her was that she had taken up with that schoolmaster again. But then, just as Scripture said that the believing wife might sanctify the heathen husband, so it was reasoned that the indigenous Kitty might naturalise the foreign Walter, and that because she belonged to the place, he might be accepted as a strange plant, given room to root in at Coombe. It was very well known that sometimes a stray cat came to a house from nobody knew where, and meeowed, entreating to be fed and harboured, and few housewives would shut it out. They would take in the stranger, give it milk and a place by the fire, and domesticate it. Even so came this Walter Bramber into Coombe out of space; whom he had belonged to, and from what sort of habitation, no one knew. He asked to be domiciled in Coombe, and Kitty took him in. What was allowable to a cat was surely not to be refused to a schoolmaster.