A Red Wallflower

r her years, or perhaps for any years. She had literally no companion but her father, and it is a stretch of courtesy to give the name to him. Another child would have fled to the ki

w it is needless to say that Colonel Gainsborough had forgotten what it was to be a child; he was therefore an incompetent critic of a child's doings or judge of a child's wants. He had an impatience for what he called a 'waste of time;' but Esther was hardly old enough to busy herself exclusively with history and geography; and the little innocent amusements to which she had recourse stood but a poor chance under his censorship. 'A waste of time, my daughter,' he would say, when he saw Esther busy perhaps with some childish fancy work, or reading something from which she promised herself entertainment, but which the colonel knew promised nothing more.

forgot him. If Pitt's own mother thought of him more constantly, she was the only person in the world of whom that was true. Pitt sometimes wrote to Colonel Gainsborough, and then Esther treasured up every revelation and detail of the letter and added them

o Esther, not even when the talk ran upon his absent son; for the question had begun to be mooted publicly, whether Pitt should go to England to finish his education. It began to be spoken of in Pitt's

ad reigned a long while in the room, when Esther broke it. She had been sitting po

ple get comfort o

said the colonel, ro

, to get comfort

now looking round at her. 'Are

ow how to find it,

u got there? Come w

unwillingly. 'It i

you want from th

d get comfort in the Bible,

ave gone back into regions of the past, and to have forgotten her. The minutes ran on, without her daring to remind him that her questio

r could get it there myself, except in a v

erned. Esther could ask him no more. But that evening, when

you know the

le, Miss

t a great deal? do yo

ible, to be sure, more or less, all my life, so to sp

er find com

I can't just say. Mebbe I never was just particlarly lookin' for that article when I went to my Bible. I don't remember

le,' Esther went on, with a tender thrill in

ress said was sure and certain true; but myself

ind comfort in the Bible, Barke

tions is too hard for me. I'd

ou, if you c

is, Miss Esther, I allays begins at one end and goes clean through to the other end;

sther musingly, 'to go through the w

ook for, before one found it. But there! the Bible ain't just like a store closet, neither, w

ha

in sich matters; but I was thinkin' the folks I've seen,

at do you m

've allays had summat else on my mind, and my hands, I may say; and one can't attend to more'n one thing at once in this world.

do that and be

e two different people

I would say, if the

she wanted it. The colonel certainly not; he had taken her question to be merely a speculative one. It did sometimes occur to Barker that her young charge moped; or, as she expr

before Colonel Gainsborough's mind. That his child was all right, he was sure; indeed how could she go wrong? She was her mother's daughter, in the first place; and in the next place, his own; noblesse oblige, in more ways than one; and then-she saw nobody! That was a great safeguard. But the one person whom Esther did see, out of her family, or I should

or a child. She will be everythin

as made

th; for as we cannot get rid of h

nd. 'Are you sure? Is t

ave him finish his studies at Ox

to do with the other thing? You star

Pitt to make

th quiet

ou do not take all

ee that it

t, Hildebrand, bu

you rea

and then, you see, she is a forlorn child, and Pitt has taken it in to his head to replace father and mother, and be her goo

more and more talk about Pitt's going abroad; and Esther felt as if the one spot of

f that long vacation with her. If he should go to England,-then indeed it would be loneliness. Now she studied, at any rate, having that spur; and she studied things also with which Pitt had had no connection; her Bible, for instance. The girl busied herself with fancy work too, every kind which Mrs. Barker could teach her, and her father did not forbid. And in one other pleasure her father was helpful to her. Esther had been trying to draw some little things, working eagerly with her pencil and a copy, absorbed in her endeavours and in the delight of partial success; when one day her father came and looked over her shoulder. That was enough. Colonel Gainsborough was a great draughtsman; the old instinct of his art stirred in him; he took Esther's pencil from her hand and showed her how she ought to us

a message or maybe included a little note for Esther herself. These messages and notes regarded often her studies; but toward the end of te