These sort of conversations fascinated Queenie; Cathy's girlish egotism never wearied her. Garth Clayton was almost as great a hero to her as he was in his sister's eyes; she had never heard of such a man. How good he must be! She used to try to picture him to herself. "Garth is tall and good-looking; every one likes his face," was Cathy's somewhat vague description. Queenie used to long to hear more. His handwriting was quite familiar to her; she often admired the firm, clear characters when Cathy read aloud amusing passages from his letters. How Queenie longed for such a brother! Such a manly, protecting tenderness breathed in every line: in his injunctions to his dear little Catherine not to be homesick or neglect her studies, in his playful hints or merry descriptions of the friends and pets she had left. "Your parrot is inconsolable, and shrieks disconsolately in our ears from morning to night, much to Langley's annoyance," he wrote once. "Ted threatens to wring its neck. I am quite sorry for the poor thing, and I believe it understands my sympathy, for it sidles up to me and looks at me with yellow, lack-lustre eyes, as much as to say, 'Where's our Cathy, old fellow?' and then clambers up my coat sleeve with beak and claw, and settles itself on my shoulder to be petted, which I suppose I do for your sake, and because poor Polly has no other friend." "There, is not that like him?" Cathy cried, with sparkling eyes. "He is always so good to any helpless creature; he has sympathy even with my poor Polly. Mr. Logan always says unhappiness or poverty is a sure passport to Garth's heart." "How sorry he would be for Emmie and me," thought poor Queenie, but she did not put her thoughts into words. CHAPTER IV. THE FEAST IN THE GARRET. "We fell to work and feasted like the gods, Like laborers, or like eager workhouse folk At Yule-tide dinner; or, to say the whole At once, like tired, hungry, healthy youth." _Jean Ingelow._ Queenie, absorbed in the themes she was correcting, was not aware of Cathy's absence from the room. As she toiled on, correcting faulty grammar and replacing obnoxious terms, she was consumed with terrible anxiety. Emmie's thin white face came between her and the page. "What can I do to save her from this life?" was her one inward ejaculation. She rose quite exhausted with the mental strain when her work was finished. The great stone hall with its one lamp looked dreary enough as she traversed it; all manner of weird shadows lurked in the corners of the landing-place. A rising wind moaned in the ivy outside, and shook the bare branches of the trees till they creaked under it; the moon slid wildly through the black clouds. Queenie thought of Emmie with a little shiver of apprehension, and hurried on.