“Right, Kitty. I’ll settle the hat-box and the new suit--brass buttons--what d’ye think of that? And straps to my trousers. I shall be fine--a blazer, Kitty--a blazer!”
“Do sit down, John; it is but a chance if we get across. You are so late.”
“The Atmospheric did it, for one--my hat for the other, tumbling in the darkness out of the box, and in the tunnel too. Fancy if the train had gone over it! I’d have wept tears of blood.”
“Do, John Pooke, do sit down and take an oar.”
“I’ll sit down in a minute, when I’ve put my box-hat where I nor you can kick it about, and the new suit where the water can’t stain it.”
“Right I am. We’ll make her fly--pist!--faster than the blessed Atmospheric, and no sticking half-way.”
Kate thrust off. She had altered the pegs, and now she gave John an oar.
“Pull for dear life!” she said; “not a moment is to be lost.”
“Yoicks away!” shouted Pooke. “So we swim--Kitty Alone and I.”
Kate, more easy now that the boat was started, said, “You asked me my name. I said Kate Quarm.”
“Well, but everyone knows you as Kitty Alone.”
“And every one knows you as Jan Tottle, but I shouldn’t have the face to so call you; and I don’t see why you should give me any name than what properly belongs to me.”
“You are not my father, and have no right to take liberties. My father may call me what he pleases, because he is my father. He is my father--you my penny fare.”
“He has right to be ferried over, not to be impudent.”
The girl laboured hard at the oar; Pooke worked more easily. He had not realised at first how uncertain was the passage. The tide went swirling down to the sea with the wind behind it, driving it as a besom.
“I say, Kate Quarm--no, Miss Catherine Quarm. Hang it! how stiff and grand we be! Do you know why I have been to Exeter?”
“There, you called me Jan. You’ll be ’titling me Tottle, next. That gives me a right to call you Kitty.”
“I’ve been to Exeter to be rigged out for sister Sue’s weddin’. My word! it has cost four guineas to make a gentleman of me.”
“Now don’t sneer. Listen. They’d took my measure afore, and they put me in my new suit, brass buttons and everything complete, and a new tie and collars standing to my ears--and a box-hat curling at the sides like the waves of the ocean--and then they told me to walk this way, please sir! So I walked, and what should I see but a gentleman stately as a dook coming towards me, and I took off my hat and said, Your servant, sir! and would have stepped aside. Will you believe me, Kate! it was just myself in a great cheval glass, as they call it. You’ll be at the wedding, won’t you?--if only to see me in my new suit. I do believe you’ll fall down and worship me, and I shall smile down at you and say, Holloa! is that my good friend Kitty Alone? And you’ll say, Your very humble servant, sir!”