Her shyness and brief reserve soon vanished under the influence of their kindness. After the first few minutes she ceased to feel as though she were a stranger amongst them, and found herself entering into their plans and wishes as though she had known them for years.
"You see Cathy has talked to me about you all, and that is why I feel that I know you," she said, a little apologetically, lifting those strange eyes of hers to Garth. The young man flushed a little, but answered her kindly. Cathy's friend was rather formidable to him; he had at least never met any one in the least like Queenie Marriott; he felt far more at home with Emmie.
Nevertheless, he hid his embarrassment in his usual manner, as though half ashamed of it, by holding his head higher than usual, and laying down the law to his sisters in his dictatorial, good-humored way. Before tea was over Cathy was coaxing him to give them a picnic in the granite quarries, and he had hummed and hesitated a good deal over her request, "just to make himself of importance," whispered the wicked little sister to Queenie.
This led to some conversation about the quarry and quarry-men; and here Garth found himself on his own ground, and talked much and well. He told Queenie, as they all strolled down the lane in the twilight, after Emmie had gone to bed, about his plans for the men's welfare and improvement, "his boys," as he termed them.
There seemed no limits to the good he did amongst them. Queenie felt her respect for him increase as she listened. He had given up one of his fields for cricket, and was himself their captain. He had instituted a reading-room; and Mr. Logan and he had formed a useful library. Here in the winter there were lectures given to the men by the Vicar, and Captain Fawcett, a neighbor of theirs, living in one of the villas lower down; or he himself read to them amusing passages from Dickens and Charles Lever. Garth's reading was none of the finest, as Queenie discovered for herself afterwards, and his singing was even worse in quality; but he would carry it through in a certain sturdy fashion of his own, that was somewhat amusing to the home critics.
Then he had schools for the children; and on alternate Sunday afternoons Mr. Logan held service in the school-room for those unable to come over to Hepshaw Church. More than this was not possible at present; but, as he modestly informed his auditor, that his sister and he had done their best to organize a Sunday school, and to hold weekly Bible-class for such as choose to attend.
"Langley is great among the women," he observed with a bright smile; "she half lives at the cottages. I wish I were half as successful with my boys."
Queenie had yet to learn the value that Garth Clayton set on his boys, and how the best and highest part of his life was lived among them.
It was too dark to go down the village, as Queenie found they all called it; so Langley proposed they should go in by-and-bye and have some music. All the Claytons were musical except Garth, though Garth would have been the last to own his deficiency in this respect, and always held his own manfully in the family concerts, in spite of Cathy's sometimes insisting on stopping her ears with cotton-wool, and Ted's muttered observation, that he never knew that rooks cawed so loudly at night.
But Garth, generally so sensitive to criticism, cared nothing for these home witticisms. He loved to air his lungs freely. He would burst into 'Simon the Cellarer,' or 'the Vicar of Bray,' or, better still, the often-abused 'Village Blacksmith,' with an honest disregard of all soft inflexion or minor chords that was painfully ludicrous. Ted and Cathy would throw themselves back in their chair and laugh noiselessly while the performance went on, and even Langley would bite her lip as her thin flexible fingers moved over the keys, the sounds she evoked almost swallowed up in that mighty bass.