ie! What a time she would have! "She will learn a little
about life while I am away," thought Ester complacently, as she stood
before the mirror, and pinned the dainty frill on her new pink cambric
wrapper, which Sadie's deft fingers had fashioned for her.

Ester had declined the assistance of Maggie--feeling that though she
knew perfectly well how to make her own toilet, she did _not_ know how
to receive assistance in the matter.

"Now I will leave you for a little," Abbie said, taking up her tiny
Bible.

"Ester, where is your Bible? I suppose you have it with you?"

Ester looked annoyed.

"I don't believe I have," she said hurriedly. "I packed in such haste,
you see, and I don't remember putting it in at all."

"Oh, I am sorry--you will miss it so much! Do you have a thousand
little private marks in your Bible that nobody else understands? I
have a great habit of reading in that way. Well, I'll bring you one
from the library that you may mark just as much as you please."

Ester sat herself down, with a very complacent air, beside the open
window, with the Bible which had just been brought her, in her lap.
Clearly she had been left alone that she might have opportunity for
private devotion, and she liked the idea very much; to be sure, she
had not been in the habit of reading in the Bible in the morning, but
that, she told herself, was simply because she never had time hardly
to breathe in the mornings at home; there she had beefsteak to
cook, and breakfast rolls to attend to, she said disdainfully, as if
beefsteak and breakfast rolls were the most contemptible articles in
the world, entirely beneath the notice of a rational being; but now
she was in a very different atmosphere; and at nine o'clock of a
summer morning was attired in a very becoming pink wrapper, finished
with the whitest of frills; and sat at her window, a young lady of
elegant leisure, waiting for the breakfast-bell. Of course she could
read a chapter in the Bible now, and should enjoy it quite as much as
Abbie did. She had never learned that happy little habit of having
a much-used, much-worn, much-loved Bible for her own personal and
private use; full of pencil marks and sacred meanings, grown dear from
association, and teeming with memories of precious communings. She had
one, of course--a nice, proper-looking Bible--and if it chanced to be
convenient when she was ready to read, she used it; if not, she took
Sadie's, or picked up Julia's fr