"Young things love to try their strength," replied Mr. Logan, softly. "We would fain clip their wings, but they would be sure to grow again. When I think of Miss Catherine," he went on, his eyes darkening strangely, "going out so bravely to her work in the heart of the great city without a tear on her bright face, however much her heart may be aching at leaving us all behind, I cannot help thinking of the white dove flying all those days over those wastes of water, with the olive branch in its mouth, and what Noah must have felt when he pulled it into the ark. It did not come to him even of its own accord, the wild weary thing, but he must needs put out his hand and draw it into its refuge."
Queenie looked up at him somewhat startled, but he did not seem to notice her surprise; his eyes had a far-off, abstracted look in them, and during the remainder of the walk he preserved an almost unbroken silence.
Cathy wrote long cheery letters, full of amusing descriptions. She liked her work on the whole, she told them, and was not daunted by the difficulties that beset the path of beginners. "It was all in the day's work," as she wrote; "and what was the good of possessing a fount of endurance fit for a Spartan woman if there was nothing to bear. In fact, I am determined to serve my noviciate properly, and to make the best of things. I am no more inclined to see bugbears now than I was to discern Emmie's favorite ghost in the old garret at Granite Lodge; so make your mind easy, my precious old Queen, and do not indulge in any more troublesome fancies on my account."
Queenie did not show these letters to any one but Emmie; but the two gloated over them in private, and tried to imagine Cathy in her black stuff dress and little white cap, moving among the dim wards with her light springy step hushed so as not to disturb the sleepers, "looking not a bit like our Cathy, but like any other ordinary person," as Emmie observed with a sigh. But if Queenie missed her friend now, the time was to come when she would yearn for her out of the fulness of an over-charged and wounded heart; when her first thought would be, "If only Cathy were here."
Things were not quite satisfactory between herself and Garth Clayton. The young man had grown strangely shy in his ways with her, and held himself almost entirely aloof from the cottage.
The fact was, Garth was in a predicament.
He was more in love than ever; but in his present circumstances marriage was out of the question. How was he to bring home a wife to the old home, entangled as he was by a load of debt and difficulties?
Garth was perfectly honest in his intentions. He had made up his mind that Queenie Marriott was the woman he loved; but he had a man's horror of a long engagement. "What's the good of telling a girl you love her if you can't see your way clear to make her your wife?" he always said; and he acted on this opinion so thoroughly that his quiet withdrawal of attentions filled the girl's heart with dismay.
"Would he be so cold and distant with me if he really loved me?" Queenie asked herself. "He never comes to see me now, and if I go up to Church-Stile House he is always so busy, and seems as if he fears to be alone with me. Does he think that I want him to pay me attentions if he has ceased to care for me in the way he did?" asked the girl, her breast heaving at the thought; and she mourned for the loss of her friend, and in her secret soul refused to be comforted.
But she knew nothing of the conflict that went on under that assumed coldness of manner that wounded her so greatly.