"And who are your nearest neighbours, Mrs. Rimmer?" asked Eager. "Oh, there's plenty across Mere--Bill o' Jack's, an' Tom o' Bob's o' Jim's, an'----" She stopped and lay listening. "That's her now." And presently a girl's voice lilting a song drew near from the direction of the Mere. The door opened and she came in carrying a pail of milk. "'Ello!" she jerked in her astonishment, and then lapsed into silence. "Where's your manners, Kattie?" from her mother, as she stood staring at the strangers, especially at Gracie. "How are you, Kattie?" said Eager. "I'm the new curate. This is my sister, Gracie. She saw you the other day and wanted to see you again." Kattie put out the tip of a red tongue and smiled in rich confusion. She was a remarkably pretty child, with large, dark-blue eyes, a mane of brown hair tumbling over her shoulders, and the healthy red-brown skin of the dwellers on the flats. Like the boys of Carne, she obviously wore only what she had to wear of necessity. In her shy grace she was like a startled fawn, looking her first on man, and ready to bound away at smallest sign of advance. "Where's yore manners, lass?" said her mother again; and Kattie drew in the tip of her tongue and twisted her little red mouth and stared at Gracie harder than ever. "Suppose you two run away out and make one another's acquaintance," said Eager to Gracie, "and I'll have a chat with Mrs. Rimmer." And the girls slipped out contentedly. "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. "I like Kattie," said Grade exuberantly, as she danced along home holding Charlie's hand. "She's a pretty little thing, but she seems very shy." "She's not a bit shy when you know her. And she can row and swim, and once she shot a duck on the Mere. And she knows where they lay their eggs, and . . ."