"Hush, my dear; what a terribly sweeping assertion! Gertrude is an undemonstrative woman, one cannot tell how deeply she feels."
"And Harry is a demonstrative man, and ought to have a wife who understands and makes much of him, instead of one who frets and teases him from morning to night. It is no good talking to me," continued Cathy, with a burst of vindictiveness rather surprising from its suddenness, "I detest that woman, with her slim figure and dark eyes, and little would-be elegancies. She to be Harry's wife and the mother of Nan! Why I would not trust a pet dog to her tender mercies and small tempers."
"Cathy, all this is highly unnecessary," remonstrated her sister in a pained tone. Her face looked a little paler and sadder as she went back into the house after uttering her little protest. A child's white woollen glove lay on the carpet beside a stray sunbeam. Queenie, following her, saw as she stooped to pick it up that she touched it lightly with her lips before laying it aside in her work-basket.
The next day was warm and bright, "regular Queen's weather," as Cathy chose to call it; and at the time appointed a merry little party assembled at the door of the Deer-hound, and filled the two little waggonettes.
Garth had gone over to the Quarry, and left his brother as his deputy, and a playful dispute ensued between him and Captain Fawcett concerning the selection of the occupants of each waggonette. "The difficulty of suiting folk was truly awful," as Ted expressed it feelingly.
Captain Fawcett had secured Langley and Miss Faith Palmer, and his wife and Miss Cosie had tucked in Emmie between them, just as Ted had slyly beckoned to the girls to favor him.
Mr. Logan and Mr. Chester had followed, and Nan was carefully lifted in and placed beside her father.
"Do you mean to say that mite of a child is going with us to the Quarry?" interposed Mrs. Fawcett, in genuine dismay. "What can her mother be thinking about?"
"Hush! her father takes her everywhere with him," replied Langley softly; "she is out with him all day on the farm; she is never tired. I know he has often carried her for miles, or walked beside her pony."
"Dear, dear! what a mistake," ejaculated Miss Cosie, straightening her brown "ugly," in the depths of which the gentle little mouse face was almost buried from view, and trying to pat the big curls. "A child of that tender age ought to be with her mother. It reminds one of the child in Kings—or was it in Samuel?—who got sunstroke, or something of the kind, and cried, 'My head, my head,' and they carried him to his mother. Think if something of that kind happened to that dear child! her father would never forgive himself; but there, there, he does it for the best, poor dear."