"I help myself, and therefore God will help me," Queenie had often said to herself in her sorely-tried youth. "I am afraid of nothing but doing wrong, and seeing Emmie suffer; the rest I can bear;" and this belief in herself saved them both. "I am going to take you to see all our celebrities," announced Cathy solemnly at the breakfast table the next morning. "It is Langley's district day, and she will have nothing to say to any of us until lunch time. I propose that we leave Emmie with Deborah to shell peas, while we do Hepshaw thoroughly." "You must take me into the church first," observed Queenie, quite prepared for a long morning of delicious idleness, and in the true holiday spirit, alert and ready for any chance enjoyment. "I think there is something delightful in making acquaintance with a fresh place; even seeing fresh faces and hearing different voices gives me an odd indescribable sort of pleasure." "You poor prisoner, yes," returned her friend sympathizingly, as they walked down the little garden path at the side of the house, and passed through the gate that opened on the churchyard, with its long terrace planted picturesquely with sycamores. "You are like a nun; you have only peeped at the world through a sort of invisible grating in Miss Titheridge's front parlor. You must make up for lost time, and live every moment thoroughly, as Garth and I do." "That is just it; we don't half live our lives, we girls," replied Queenie dreamily; "half of us seem asleep; our faculties lie dormant, and get rusted just for want of use. Miss Titheridge hung round my neck like a mill-stone; she literally crushed and pulverized all the best parts of me. It is being born again; it is a sort of moral regeneration, this feeling of freedom, this--oh, how can I make you understand it all, Cathy!" "Seeing is believing," was the brusque answer. "You are a different creature, my dear Madam Dignity; you were like the frond of my favorite prickly shield fern that I was watching yesterday. You were all there, you know, the greenness and the freshness; but one could not get at you, you were so tightly swathed and coiled up." "Yes," returned Queenie joyously; "and now I have found myself, my own individuality. I do think, seriously, that I have a larger capacity for living than other people. I have good health, that is one thing; my constitution is perfect; then I love work, I really and literally do, Cathy. Work braces one, it brings all one's faculties into play; work is rest; inaction, idleness; pleasure for the sake of pleasure, is simply paralysis of one's higher life, it is premature old age." "I wish I felt as you do," was the half-envious answer; "there is nothing little about you, Queenie, Garth said so last night." "Did he? you should not have told me that, Cath."