"Pleased! I am more glad than I can say," returned the Vicar, with a look that Queenie did not quite read, but which touched her greatly, it was at once so keen and gentle. "God bless both the work and worker. Oh, here comes the Captain; perhaps when you have looked over your new abode you may like to see the inside of the school-house?" "We will all walk down together," interposed the Captain. "Come along, Miss Marriott; don't keep the Vicar waiting." Queenie followed the two gentlemen silently. A strange sensation woke in her as she crossed the threshold. She had closed the first chapter of her existence. Here was a new life waiting for her to take up; it would be lived out underneath this humble roof. The past lay shrouded away, hidden like a dead hand out of sight. What would the future hold for her and Emmie? She followed them silently from room to room, as Captain Fawcett made his brief, business-like comments. The damp oozed from the corners, long lengths of soiled paper trailed from the walls, the boards creaked under their foot-fall, the scurry of tiny feet and the squeak of mice sounded behind the wainscot, docks and nettles peeped in at the begrimed windows. Queenie shivered slightly. "We will alter all this," exclaimed Captain Fawcett, turning briskly round on her, and pulling at his grey moustache. "This damp mouldiness is enough to make any one shiver; a little paint and a few coats of white-wash, and a fresh paper or two, will make a different thing of it." "I was not thinking of the damp," returned Queenie in a low voice; and then she went and stood by herself at the window, looking up the ridge of ragged grass that lay like a steep little wilderness behind the house. It was the newness and the strangeness of her surroundings that oppressed her. "To have a house of one's own, that is the strangest part of all," she thought. She was still silent as she walked down the village street. One or two of the women at the cottage doors stood and looked after them curiously; but at the sight of the quaint edifice, with its half-moon windows, Queenie's youthful energy revived. She walked in, head erect, as the gentlemen made way for her, and stood before the old wooden desks, and looked at the half-dozen forms before her. It was a small square room, well, but not cheerfully, lighted; the windows set so high in the walls that no signs of the outer world could distract the attention of the little students. "This small inner room is for the infants," explained Mr. Logan, coming round to her side; "it is a very humble affair, you see." "Yes; but it is my work," returned Queenie, facing round on them with a quiver of excitement. "My work, and my life, and no other's, and I mean to do the best with both of them that I can." Some one stooping his high head at the door cried softly "Amen" to himself. It was Garth Clayton. CHAPTER II. DORA.