I see a girl of ten, of slight, graceful figure, and of so active a nature that if you found her quite still you feared at once that something was wrong with her.

Her face was very charming, browned richly with the kiss of sun and wind, and without a freckle, yet not so brown as to hide the rich colour of her feelings, which swept across her face as quickly as the cloud-shadows across the sparkling face of the sea.

Her eyes were large and dark—­all alight with the joy of life; sparkling with fun and mischief; blazing forked lightnings at some offence, fancied as often as not; big with entreaty that none could refuse; more rarely—­in those days—­deep with sober thought; but always—­shining, sparkling, blazing, entreating—­the most wonderful and fascinating eyes in the world to the boy at her side, on whom they shone and sparkled and blazed and entreated, and moulded always to her imperious little will.

A sturdy boy of twelve, short if anything for his age at that time, though later he grew to full Sercq height and something over; but strong and healthy, with a pair of keen blue eyes, and nothing whatever distinctive about his brown face, unless it was a touch of the inflexible honesty which had been diligently instilled into him from the time he was three years old.  Perhaps also some little indication of the stubborn determination which must surely have come from his grandfather, and which some people called obstinacy.

Anyway the girl trusted him implicitly, ruled him imperiously, quarrelled with him at times but never beyond reason, and always quickly made it up again, and in so delightful a fashion that one remembered the quarrel no more but only the making-up,—­beamed upon him then more graciously than before, and looked to him for certain help in every time of need.

Inseparables these two, except when the Gouliot waters were in an evil humour and rendered the passage impossible, for her home was on Brecqhou and his was on Sercq.  Fortunately for their friendship, Aunt Jeanne Falla lived on Sercq also, and Carette was as often to be found at Beaumanoir as at her father’s house on Brecqhou, and it was to her father’s liking that it should be so.  For he and the boys were often all away for days at a time, and on such occasions, as they started, they would drop Carette on the rough shore of Havre Gosselin, or set her hands and feet in the iron rings that scaled the bald face of the rock, and up she would go like a goat, and away to the welcome of the house that was her second and better home.  What Carette would have been without Aunt Jeanne I cannot imagine; and so—­all thanks to the sweet, sharp soul who took her mother’s place.

See these two, then, as they lay in the sweet short herbage of Tintageu or Moie de Mouton, chins on fist, crisp light hair close up alongside floating brown curls, caps or hats scorned impediments to rapid motion, bare heels kicking up emotionally behind, as they surveyed their little world, and watched the distant ships, and dreamed dreams and saw visions.