"Impracticable and absurd to the last degree. Good heavens, Miss Marriott!" flinging back his head with a gesture of mingled excitement and wrath, "have you no friend or relative to stand by you, and prevent you from throwing yourself away on this miserable pittance?"
"I have one very good friend, but he is poor," returned the girl, and then she sighed. Something in Garth's manner—his assumed roughness, his suppressed wrath, the sudden break and softening of his voice as he uttered his short remonstrance—touched and yet pained her. What would it be to have a brother to work for her when she needed support, a strong arm that could protect her in times of emergency!
Poor self-reliant Queenie felt her bravery oozing out. Suddenly a pang of self-pity crossed her as she pictured the future. Would it always be work and drudgery for herself and Emmie? must she for ever go through life with this weak burthen round her neck, toiling, toiling, with the child's feeble hand in hers?
"Friends will not be wanting to us; heaven helps those who help themselves," she cried with a clasp of her hands and another involuntary sigh. "I am not afraid—not often, I mean. I prayed for work; and now work has come, and I do not mean to shrink from it. I hope you and your sisters will not be ashamed of knowing me when I am only a village school-mistress. Are you sure you will not mind—for your sisters, I mean? turning on him a little anxiously.
"Do you think such a question deserves an answer?" somewhat reproachfully. "You do not know us yet, Miss Marriott. We shall honor you more in your poverty and independence than if you came amongst us rolling in riches. Rich people are my abhorrence, women especially. Agar's prayer—'Give me neither poverty nor wealth'—always pleased me. I am an odd fellow, and have my hobbies and facts like other men—this is one of them."
"It is a very comfortable one, as far as I am concerned. Then you will promise to help me with your influence with Mr. Logan and Captain Fawcett?"
"I suppose I must, if you will let me have my grumble out first. Recollect, I enter my remonstrance; I do not approve of your scheme in the least."
"You have made me understand that most fully."
"I denounce it as moral suicide."
"I call that exaggeration."