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