But Kit was almost too absorbed with her endeavour to get the creases out of a doll's petticoat to heed her scrutiny.

She only paused to nod at Malcolm in a friendly way.
"I wasn't wet one little bit, though Ma'am scolded dad so," she exclaimed in her high shrill voice.

"I was like a queen in a big tent, wasn't I, dad?
I was awful comfortable." "She might have been drowned dead for all the care he took," returned Mrs.Martin with a contemptuous sniff, as she planted her arms akimbo in her favourite attitude.

Her elbows were so sharp and bony that Anna thought of the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland.

"If it weren't for me that blessed lamb would be a corpse every day of her life--though I beg and pray him on my bended knees not to run her into danger." She was only a coarse-tongued virago, but even Anna, who had shrunk from her, felt a little mollified and touched as she saw how tenderly the rough hand rested on the child's curls.