"My dear young lady, do you mean this?"
"Yes, indeed; and of course I knew how greatly I should surprise you. It is a droll idea, that the school-mistress at Hepshaw should have five thousand a-year, is it not? I have hardly got used to the fact myself; and then, you see, even Emmie does not know. It was Emmie's uncle, Mr. Calcott, who left me all that money. But I know Cathy has told you all the particulars of that sad story; he could not leave it to Emmie, you see, and so it has all come to me; but I shall always feel as though it belongs most to her."
"I must say I am extremely astonished!"
Queenie looked a little mischievous at that.
"I congratulate you most heartily on your good fortune; but, all the same, I cannot understand your motives for secrecy. Here you have been for the last three months living in this cottage, and teaching in our village school, while all the time you might have been dwelling in ease and luxury." And, with all his knowledge of human nature, Mr. Logan looked extremely perplexed.
"You must not be too hard on a girl's whim," she replied, looking down.
"Oh, it was a whim then!" with a dawning perception of the truth.
"Yes, it was just that," rather hastily. "You see I did not want the money, and it rather vexed me, coming in such quantities, and when everything was so nicely arranged. I had just been elected your school-mistress, and the cottage was being furnished for us, and Emmie was so looking forward to it, and I had grown to like you all so; and it seemed so hard to give it all up, and go and live in a grand house in Carlisle, as Caleb wanted us to do. And so I thought," with a little quiver of the lip she could not hide, "that I would just put it all away for a little while, and be happy and enjoy ourselves; and by-and-bye, when I had got tired of teaching, it would come out, and you would all laugh with me, and think it a good joke that Emmie and I had been living like disguised princesses."
"Ah, well! it is a pretty piece of girlish romance," smiling in spite of himself; "but I must say I thought my schoolmistress was a very different sort of person—far more staid and matter-of-fact."
"And you are disappointed in her?" a little piteously, for Queenie had lately grown to distrust the wisdom of this freak of hers, and was sensitive in consequence.