Katie Logan looked up at her with some little doubt. She had come by herself to the manse, in advance of Joanna, who had been detained to accompany her sister. The two girls had been invited some time before to “take tea” at the manse--and Desirée had been very curious and interested about her first visit to her white house on the hill. Now that she had accomplished it, however, it subdued her spirit a little, and gave the little Frenchwoman for once a considerable inclination to get “low,” and cry. The house and the room were very unlike any house she had ever known--yet they were so homelike that Desirée’s thoughts grew tender. And Katie Logan looked at her doubtfully. Desirée’s impulsive little heart had clung to Katie every time she saw her. She was so sweet and neat--so modest and natural--so unlike Patricia and Joanna, and all the womankind of that sloven house of Melmar. The girl, who had a mother and an elder sister, and was far from home, yearned to Katie--but the little mistress of the manse looked with doubt upon the French governess--principally, to tell the truth, because she was French, and Katie Logan, with all her good sense, was only a country girl, and had but a very, very small experience of any world beyond Kirkbride. “Mamma came from this country,” said Desirée, again, softly. She had a letter in her pocket--rather a sentimental letter--from mamma, which perhaps a wiser person might have smiled at a little--but it made Desirée’s heart expand toward the places which mamma too had seen in her youth, and remembered still. “Indeed! then you are a little bit Scotch, you are not all French,” said Katie, brightening a little; “is it very long since your mamma went away?--is she in France now? Is she likely to come back again?” Desirée shook her head. “I should like to be rich, and buy this house, and bring her here--I love this house,” cried the girl. A little cloud came upon Katie’s face. She was jealous of any inference that some time or other the manse might change hands. She could not bear to think of that--principally because Katie had begun to find out with painful anxiety and fear, that her father was growing old, that he felt the opening chill of winter a great deal more than he used to do--and that the old people in the village shook their heads, and said to themselves that the minister was “failing” every time he passed their doors. “This house can never be sold,” said Katie, briefly--even so briefly as though the words were rather hard to say. “It is not like Melmar,” said Desirée. “I want the air and the sun to come into that great house--it can not breathe--and how the people breathe in it I do not know.” “But they are very kind people,” said Katie, quickly. Desirée lifted her black eyes and looked full at her--but Katie was working and did not meet the look. “Joanna is fond of you,” said Desirée, “and I like her--and I am fond of the old lady whom they call Aunt Jean.”