"I am sure you will be able to repay us; we will do all in our power to help you to do so." Then, after a moment's hesitation: "I feel just as you do about these sort of things. I like to help myself, and not to be dependent on other people. Believe me, Miss Marriott, I think far too highly of your independence, and respect you too much to offer you any help that you could not accept."
"Then I will trust you," returned Queenie in a low tone. She spoke upon impulse. It cost her a momentary pang, as though she felt some cold weight suddenly settling down on her; and after all, what could she do? Caleb could not help them, at least not much. Emmie and she could not dwell between four bare walls. What was there for her but to accept the kindly advance so gracefully hidden under Langley's name—Langley and Cathy, who had not a six-pence of their own, as Cathy once somewhat triumphantly informed her? "It is Garth who buys everything for us, dear old fellow, and pays all our bills, after grumbling over them," she said once.
"I assure you, you will never repent the trust," he answered, so gravely that Queenie feared he was hurt by her reluctance, until the old bright smile came back to re-assure her. "Then this grand matter is settled, and we will go and talk to Langley."
Emmie was almost wild with joy when she heard the news. The sensitive little creature burst into a perfect passion of tears, as she clung to her sister's neck, trembling with such excitement that Queenie was frightened.
"Oh, Queenie, is it really, really true that we are going to live in that little cottage, you and I together, like the sisters in story books?" she exclaimed over and over again.
"Yes, yes; once upon a time there were two sisters—one of them was handsome and the other ugly," interrupted Cathy briskly.
"The handsome one was my Queen then, she drops diamonds and roses every time she speaks; I am the little ugly duckling they called me at Miss Titheridge's."
"Nonsense," returned Cathy abruptly, kissing the little pale face, as she spoke somewhat hurriedly. There was still a weird, unchildlike look about Emmie—the blue eyes were still too bright and large, the cheeks too thin and hollow, but the little rings of yellow hair were beginning to curl prettily over the temples. "Remember the ugly duckling turned into the beautiful swan at last."
"Oh, I don't want beauty; Queenie is welcome to it all. I shall have it some day in heaven, there is no ugliness there you know," moralized the child in her strange old-fashioned way. A sudden mist rose to her sister's eyes as she spoke, the graceful fancies of the old fairy tale dissolved, and in its place came an overwhelming vision of a white-robed multitude, beatific with youth, and endowed with angelic beauty.
There is no ugliness there; no, little Emmie, no ugliness because no sin, no weariness of a diseased and worn-out body, no gloom of an over-tempted and troubled mind; for in the new heavens and the new earth God will see that everything there also is good.