Queenie and Em and their staunch friend Cathy could have told a different tale, less varnished and highly colored. Miss Titheridge's adopted daughters fared somewhat scantily; not indeed on the bread and water of affliction, but on bread on which the butter was spread sparingly, on cold tea, on the least tempting cuts of the joint after the young ladies were served. And they were lodged somewhat coldly, in a large roomy attic, with a draughty window and no fireplace, wherein little Em's hands became at times very blue and chilled--a place much haunted by a sportive family of mice, who gambolled and nibbled through the small hours of the night, with an occasional squeak from Mr. or Mrs. Mouse that roused Queenie, dozing uneasily under the thin blankets, and kept her awake and shivering for hours. These were hardships certainly, but, as Queenie was given to observe somewhat bitterly, she was used to hardships. Queenie and her little half-sister Emily were the daughters of a clergyman, who held a living in the north of England, at first in Lancashire, which afterwards he had exchanged for one in Yorkshire. Queenie never recollected her mother, but she did not long miss maternal care, which was warmly lavished upon her by her young step-mother. Queenie was only seven years old when her father married again; he had made an excellent choice in his second wife, and, as was extremely rare in such cases, had secured a real mother for his little girl. Mrs. Marriott was not a judicious woman in some respects, but she was extremely warm-hearted and sensitive; she would have thought it the height of injustice to make any difference between the children, even though one was her own, and she prided herself on treating them with equal tenderness. Mr. Marriott was devotedly attached to his wife and children, and yet it could not be said that he was a happy man. He had one fault--he was a bad arithmetician; throughout his life he never could be made to understand that a pound did not consist of thirty shillings. It sounds ludicrous, impossible. A highly educated man, and a good Christian, nevertheless it was the case. This mistaken notion spoiled his life, and brought him to his death a broken-spirited man. Queenie never recollected the time when her father was not in debt; the sweet domestic life of the Vicarage was poisoned and blighted by this upas-tree shadow of poverty. Mrs. Marriott's pretty-girl bloom died out under it, her soft cheek grew thin and haggard. It haunted the study chair where Mr. Marriott spent hours of hard brain and heart labor for his people; it spoke despondently in his sermons; it weakened the strong head and arm, and marred their usefulness.