This distinct summary of the amount of her affection for the household amused Katie, who was half afraid of a governess-complaint against her employers. “Do you like to be so far from home?” she said. “Like!” Desirée became suddenly vehement. “I should like to live with mamma--but,” cried the girl, “how could you ask me?--do not _you_ know?” “I have no mother,” said Katie, very quietly; “boys are always eager to leave home--girls might sometimes wish it too. Do you know Cosmo Livingstone, whom you saw in Edinburgh, has gone abroad for no reason at all that I know--and his brothers have both gone to work, and make their fortunes if they can--and my little brothers speak already of what they are going to do when they grow men--they will all go away.” “In this country, people always talk of making fortunes. I should like to make a fortune too,” said Desirée, “but I do not know what to do.” “Girls never make fortunes,” said Katie, with a smile. “Why?” cried the little governess, “but I wish it--yes, very much--though I do not know how to do it; here I have just twenty pounds a year. What should you do if you had no papa, and had to work for yourself.” Katie rose from her chair in trouble and excitement. “Don’t speak so--you frighten me!” she cried, with an involuntary pang. “I have all the children. You do not understand it--you must not speak of _that_.” “Of what?” asked Desirée, with a little astonishment. But she changed the subject with ready tact when she saw the painful color on Katie’s face. “I should like mamma to see you,” she said in a vein of perfectly natural and sincere flattery. “When I tell her what kind of people I live among, I do not speak of mademoiselle at Melmar, or even of Joanna--I tell her of you, and then she is happy--she thinks poor little Desirée is very well where she is with such as these.” “I am afraid you are too good to me,” said Katie, with a half conscious laugh--“you don’t know me well enough yet--is it Patricia whom you call mademoiselle?” Desirée shrugged her little shoulders slightly; she gave no other answer, but once more looked out from the window down the pretty brae of Tyne, where all the cottages were so much the clearer from the winterly brown aspect of the trees, stripped of their foliage. It was not like any other scene familiar to Desirée, still it did seem familiar to her--she could not tell how--as if she had known it all her life. “Does Cosmo Livingstone, whom you spoke of, live near?” asked Desirée, “and will you tell me of _his_ mother? Is she by herself, now that all her boys are gone?--is she a lady? Are they great people or are they poor? Joanna speaks of a great old castle, and I think I saw it from the road. They must be great people if they lived there.” “They are not great people now,” said Katie, the color warming in her cheek--“yet the castle belonged to them once, and they were different. But they are good people still.”