Cathy's descriptions somehow fascinated her oddly. The little straggling market town, with its long, winding street or road; the old Deerhound Inn; the white workhouse, the church and vicarage, standing high, and overlooking the town, and set prettily among plane trees; the dark old 'Church-stile House,' with its gloomy entry, and back windows looking over the ancient monuments and tomb-stones—Queenie could see them all. She could even fancy herself walking up the steep, narrow garden of the Vicarage, between tall bushes of roses and lavender.
"The Vicarage is such an ugly, bare-looking little house; quite a shabby cottage; only Mr. Logan has made it so comfortable, and has added a room to it, such a nice room, which he has made out of the stable. I think you would like Mr. Logan, Queenie; he is quite old, nearly forty, I should think. People say he is very plain, but I think he has a nice, funny face; and he is such a character, and wears such old, patched coats, and Miss Cosie always calls him Kit, or 'Christopher, my dear.'"
"And who might Miss Cosie be?" Queenie asked, with an amused air; she dearly loved Cathy's descriptions.
"Oh, Miss Cosie was Charlotte Logan; she was his sister, and kept his house. Every one called her Miss Cosie, even the poor people; it was a name she got when a child." No, she could not describe her; she was a little woman with two big brown curls pinned to her face, and she always wore a soft grey Shetland shawl, and cooed out her words in a soft, plaintive fashion; she only wished Queenie could see her, and then Queenie sighed again.
These sort of conversations fascinated Queenie; Cathy's girlish egotism never wearied her. Garth Clayton was almost as great a hero to her as he was in his sister's eyes; she had never heard of such a man. How good he must be! She used to try to picture him to herself. "Garth is tall and good-looking; every one likes his face," was Cathy's somewhat vague description. Queenie used to long to hear more.
His handwriting was quite familiar to her; she often admired the firm, clear characters when Cathy read aloud amusing passages from his letters.
How Queenie longed for such a brother! Such a manly, protecting tenderness breathed in every line: in his injunctions to his dear little Catherine not to be homesick or neglect her studies, in his playful hints or merry descriptions of the friends and pets she had left.
"Your parrot is inconsolable, and shrieks disconsolately in our ears from morning to night, much to Langley's annoyance," he wrote once. "Ted threatens to wring its neck. I am quite sorry for the poor thing, and I believe it understands my sympathy, for it sidles up to me and looks at me with yellow, lack-lustre eyes, as much as to say, 'Where's our Cathy, old fellow?' and then clambers up my coat sleeve with beak and claw, and settles itself on my shoulder to be petted, which I suppose I do for your sake, and because poor Polly has no other friend."
"There, is not that like him?" Cathy cried, with sparkling eyes. "He is always so good to any helpless creature; he has sympathy even with my poor Polly. Mr. Logan always says unhappiness or poverty is a sure passport to Garth's heart."
"How sorry he would be for Emmie and me," thought poor Queenie, but she did not put her thoughts into words.