Esther Waters

d three days of sunshine would make all the difference in their sum of happiness. In the kitchen Mrs. Latch and Esther had been busy for some time with chickens and pies

ked into the drag that had come from Brighton, and the yard resounded with

late! You'l

med blacker than ever under a white silk parasol, which she waved negligently above her as she stood up calling and talking to everyone until the Gaffer told her angrily to sit down, as he was going to start. Then William and the coac

new clothes! …Everyone said so-Sarah and Margaret and M

Latch should have come out to see him. "Perhaps this will make her dislike me again," thought the girl. Mrs. Latch moved about rapidly, and she opened an

at he has bet mu

Mrs. Latch?… But the h

ys certain to win. So they have won you round to their way of

hat can I do, a poor girl like me? If it hadn't been for Wi

e him very

ry kind to me-h

on't know all. I was much troubled at that time, and somehow I did not-. But th

Latch, I

alk with him the other night, did he tel

e everyone else, but he did no

hat…. But you'll not te

Latch, I

m now. Once they get a taste for it it is like drink. I wish he was married, that might get him out of it. Some w

tch allowed Esther to hurry on the dinner, and by one o'clock they had all finished. Sarah and Margaret were going into Brighton to do some shopping, Grover was going to Worthing to spend the afternoon with the wife of one of the guards of the Brighton and South Coast Railway. Mrs. Latch went upstairs to lie down. So it grew lonelier and lonelier in the kitchen. Esther's sewing fell out of her hands, and she wondered what she shou

Esther wondered. But the sea here was lonely as a prison, and, seeing the treeless coast with its chain of towns, her thoughts suddenly reverted to William. She wished he were with her, and for pleasant contemplation she thought of that happy evening when she saw him coming through the hunting gate, when, his arm about her, William

louds-white up above, rose-coloured as they approached

id Esther, glad to find someone

ss. You're from W

ve gone to the races; there was n

after she rose to her feet. "I think that it must be getting near tea-time; I must be going.

Trains were passing all the while, scattering, it seemed, in their noisy passage over the spider-legged bridge, the news from Goodwood. The new

eople in those trains know

mehow I feel as if I knew too. I

pare furniture expressed a meagre, lonely life. She dropped a plate as she laid the table, and

otten that they were gone. I should ha

an stir up my tea with anything-a

ay, 'Beaten a head on the post,' or 'Broke down, otherwise he would have won in a canter.' I have always tried to be a good wife and tried to console him, and to do the best when he said, 'I have lost half a year's wages, I don't know how we shall pull through.' I have borne with ten thousand times more than I can tell you. The sufferings of a gambler's wife cannot be told. Tell me, what do you think my feelings must have been when one night I heard him calling me out of my sleep, when I heard him say, 'I can't die, Annie, without bidding you good-bye. I can only hope t

w every day so orderly, so precise, so sedate, so methodical, so unemotional, into

think of them. Heaven only knows what will become of them… John is as kind a husband as ever was if it weren't

, winner of the

e paper, and they wandered about the town hearing and seeing nothing, so nervous were they. At last Esther proposed to ask at t

man answered. The girl

t, it is all ri

me through the crimson evening and she saw the leaders trotting in a cloud of dust. Ginger was driving, and he shouted to her, "He won!" The Gaffer waved the horn and shouted, "He won!" Peggy waved her broken paraso