He flushed at this, and a look of pain crossed his face.
"She may have troubles of her own; she will not like you to tell me this," he began in an embarrassed tone; but Emmie was too much engrossed with her subject to heed him.
"Shall you be very poor?" she persisted; "shall you be obliged to leave this old house, where you and Langley were born, and go and live in a poky little place in Warstdale, as Cathy says?"
"Cathy knows nothing about it; she ought not to tell you such things," rather quickly. "Of course we must leave this house, and of course we shall have to work; but we are young, and that will not hurt us. Come, come, things are not as bad as you and Cathy make them out; put all these sad thoughts out of your head. How could they have talked so before the child?" he muttered to himself.
But Emmie was not so easily comforted. She stood silently by Garth a minute, and then her eyes filled, and two large tears coursed slowly down her cheeks.
"Now, Emmie, don't be silly; I can't have you crying over this!" but his tone was kind; and as he spoke he drew the child gently to him.
"I can't help it," she whispered. "Cathy says you eat nothing, and that you are getting so thin and ill; and that frightens Queenie, and makes her look grave."
"Why, this is too absurd!" he began, and then his tone changed. The child would make herself ill if she went on like this. "Do you think you could make me some tea and some hot buttered toast if I were to promise to eat it? Now I think about it I am rather faint, and hot buttered toast is a favorite luxury of mine. Langley will find you the toasting-fork and things if you go and ask her."
In a moment Emmie's tears were dried by magic, and the little red hood laid aside. When, half-an-hour afterwards, Queenie entered the house in some alarm to know what had become of Emmie, she found a little scene that surprised her.
Garth and Emmie were seated with a little round table between them; a choice pile of buttered toast, done to a nicety, lay on the young man's plate. Emmie's face was flushed with excitement and heat, her hands were slightly blackened.