She wasn't a bad sort altogether, very kind-hearted and merry.

She was altered a good deal since I saw her last, she looked older and thinner, but she was laughing and dancing as lively as ever.

As soon as she caught sight of me, she came to me, and I think she was real glad to see me, because she thought I had been kind to her once when she was ill and very poor.
"'Gethin Owens, I do believe,' she says, 'where have you been all this long time?
Kitty Jones will be glad to see you, whatever.' "I saw the foreign sailor she had been dancing with looking very black at me, and I began to laugh, and talk, and joke with Bella, just to plague him, and we danced and drank together, and I soon saw that the two years I had been away had not improved her.

She was more noisy, and her talk was more coarse, and many an oath was on her lips.

I saw it, but I didn't care, because I had become quite reckless, and my laugh and my jokes were louder than anyone's in the room.
"'Well, wherever you have been,' says Bella, 'you're very much improved, Gethin.' "'Am I that ?' says I.