"I shall not be above my work; you will have no reason to repent your decision," returned the girl firmly, but modestly.
"Well said, my dear young lady, 'who sweeps a room.' You know what our excellent Herbert says, 'It is the motive that ennobles the work.' I am glad to see you remember that."
"I mean my work to ennoble me," replied Queenie, her face glowing with the thought. "It does not matter that the building is poor, and the children some of them rough and uncultivated; it is a grand work to teach young minds, and to watch their progress, and get interested in their lives. It may tire one a little at times," she continued candidly, "but it is not mere drudgery and nothing else. Oh, Mr. Logan, say you are pleased to have me; it will give me heart and courage to hear you say so."
"Pleased! I am more glad than I can say," returned the Vicar, with a look that Queenie did not quite read, but which touched her greatly, it was at once so keen and gentle. "God bless both the work and worker. Oh, here comes the Captain; perhaps when you have looked over your new abode you may like to see the inside of the school-house?"
"We will all walk down together," interposed the Captain. "Come along, Miss Marriott; don't keep the Vicar waiting."
Queenie followed the two gentlemen silently. A strange sensation woke in her as she crossed the threshold. She had closed the first chapter of her existence. Here was a new life waiting for her to take up; it would be lived out underneath this humble roof. The past lay shrouded away, hidden like a dead hand out of sight. What would the future hold for her and Emmie?
She followed them silently from room to room, as Captain Fawcett made his brief, business-like comments. The damp oozed from the corners, long lengths of soiled paper trailed from the walls, the boards creaked under their foot-fall, the scurry of tiny feet and the squeak of mice sounded behind the wainscot, docks and nettles peeped in at the begrimed windows. Queenie shivered slightly.
"We will alter all this," exclaimed Captain Fawcett, turning briskly round on her, and pulling at his grey moustache. "This damp mouldiness is enough to make any one shiver; a little paint and a few coats of white-wash, and a fresh paper or two, will make a different thing of it."
"I was not thinking of the damp," returned Queenie in a low voice; and then she went and stood by herself at the window, looking up the ridge of ragged grass that lay like a steep little wilderness behind the house. It was the newness and the strangeness of her surroundings that oppressed her. "To have a house of one's own, that is the strangest part of all," she thought.
She was still silent as she walked down the village street. One or two of the women at the cottage doors stood and looked after them curiously; but at the sight of the quaint edifice, with its half-moon windows, Queenie's youthful energy revived.