Queenie was listening to them with interest when Garth came up and claimed her attention.
"While they are getting the quarry engine ready I want to show you the workmen's cottages, and the room where Langley and I have our classes," said the young man a little condescendingly. He looked grey-eyed, eager, rather flushed with playing the part of host and cicerone to so many ladies. His white teeth gleamed with a bright happy smile under his dark moustache: but for all that his tone had a slight accent of condescension that made Queenie smile as she followed him.
"You are master here—Garth Clayton of Warstdale—and I am a poor little school-teacher, a nobody," thought the girl, with just a faint touch of rebellion, growing hot all at once.
"Stay, this is rough walking; let me give you some help," and he turned back and held out his hand. For a moment Queenie hesitated; it was her nature to be independent, and walk alone. She never willingly owned to any small feminine weakness. "If she fell she could pick herself up," she always said; but a glance at the kind bright face changed her resolution. She took the offered hand without any demur, and let herself be guided through the intricacies of the path as meekly as Nan, who followed them, holding tightly to her father's sleeve. She stood quietly beside him, an appreciative and most sympathizing listener, as he explained, with not unpardonable egotism, all his little schemes and plans for the comfort of his workmen. "My boys deserve all that I can do for them, they are such good fellows, and clever, too, some of them. Why, there is Daniel Armstrong;" and here followed a string of anecdotes bearing on the cleverness of this man, the gratitude and good feeling of another, the sad troubles of a third, until Ted came down on them in a whirlwind of indignation, to know what Garth meant by keeping them all waiting?
"All right, Ted; go on with Miss Marriott," returned his brother good-humoredly, breaking in upon the lad's wrath. "I am going to carry Nan;" and, as the little lady looked dubious, and clung close to her father, he caught her up and seated her lightly on his shoulder and marched off with her, a smile breaking over Nan's face as her father clapped his hands after her.
The little engine was already waiting for them; and the trucks were furnished with boxes and hampers, which formed seats for the ladies. Emmie crept up to her sister to whisper her ecstasies. "She had never been so happy in her life; everyone was so good to her, that kind Mrs. Fawcett especially; and Miss Cosie and Miss Faith Palmer; she was sure she would love Miss Faith dearly; and did not Queenie think she was very pretty?"
"She certainly had been," Queenie thought, "though no longer young." It was a very sweet, loveable face still, though with a certain sadness of repression on it—the shadowing of an over-quiet life. Coloring would still have lent it beauty; but, as it was, the pallid neutral tints harmonized with the grey Quaker-like costume and little close bonnet. The voice was very sweet, but lacked enthusiasm; it touched one like some plaintive minor chord; it was the face and voice that one meets behind the gratings of nunneries, or in the hushed wards of a hospital, where youth finds no place, and the bustle of life is shut out.
She placed herself by Queenie as the engine steamed off, somewhat slowly, and the work-sheds receded from their view.
"You must come and see my sisters. One of them, Charity, is an invalid, and the sight of a fresh face is such a treat to her. Her world is bounded by four walls, and she lives in her books. She knows far more about it than I do, who was never a reader," said the quiet woman with a little sigh.
Queenie fell in love with Miss Faith on the spot, as she told Cathy afterwards. Young as she was, she knew far more of the world than this woman of thirty-five. The unsophisticated freshness of the simple woman, her tender voice, her old-fashioned ways, and little quaint pedanteries, charmed the young governess, grown bitter with the hard edge of life. Before the day was out she learnt a good deal about "the Sisterhood," as Garth and Cathy always called the Evergreens, where the Palmers lived. The eldest sister, Hope, was cosmopolitan in her charities,—knitted woollen jugs and socks for the missionary boxes of half the neighbourhood, was a strong advocate of the temperance movement, and was a little shaky in her church principles, having, as her sisters well knew, a decided leaning to the society of the Plymouth Sisters.