I was handed over to the stables, and there they made a sort of groom of me; and presently, because I was a handy lad, I was fetched indoors when company was present, and set to wait at table in a livery coat.
The Knockowen household was a small one, consisting only of his honour and Mistress Gorman and the young lady.

Mistress Gorman was a sad woman, who had little enough pleasure in this world, and that not of her husband's making.

The man and his wife were almost strangers, meeting only at meal-times, and not always then, to exchange a few formal words, and then separate, one to her lonely chamber, the other to his grounds.
The brightness of the house was all centred in my little lady Kit, who was as remote from her mother's sadness as she was from her father's meanness.

From the first she made my life at Knockowen tolerable, and very soon she made it necessary.
I shall not soon forget my first meeting with her.

She had been away on a visit when I arrived, and a week later I was ordered to take the boat over to Rathmullan to fetch her home.
It was a long, toilsome journey, in face of a contrary wind, against which the boat travelled slowly, and frequently not without the help of an oar.