brilliant match
for my daughter, not such a husband as your sisters have." Esther's lip
quivered and her color rose again; but she did not speak. "Still I will
say that I think a fellow who can make his own fortune is better than
a man with twice that fortune made for him. My dear, if Lossing has the
right stuff in him and he is a real good fellow, I shan't make you go
into a decline by objecting; but you see it is a big shock to me, and
you must let me get used to it, and let me size the young man up in my
own way. There is another thing, Esther; I am going to Europe Thursday,
that will give me just a day in Chicago if I go to-morrow, and I wish
you would come with me. Will you mind?"

Either she changed her seat or she started at the proposal. But how
could she say that she wanted to stay in America with a man who had not
said a formal word of love to her? "I can get ready, I think, papa,"
said Esther.

They drove on. He felt a crawling pain in his heart, for he loved his
daughter Esther as he had loved no other child of his; and he knew that
he had hurt her. Naturally, he grew the more angry at the impertinent
young man who was the cause of the flitting; for the whole European plan
had been cooked up since the receipt of Mrs. Ellis's letter. They were
on the very street down which he used to walk (for it takes the line of
the hills) when he was a poor boy, a struggling, ferociously ambitious
young man. He looked at the changed rows of buildings, and other
thoughts came uppermost for a moment. "It was here father's church used
to stand; it's gone, now," he said. "It was a wood church, painted a
kind of gray; mother had a bonnet the same color, and she used to say
she matched the church. I bought it with the very first money I earned.
Part of it came from weeding, and the weather was warm, and I can feel
the way my back would sting and creak, now! I would want to stop, often,
but I thought of mother in church with that bonnet, and I kept on!
There's the place where Seeds, the grocer that used to trust us, had
his store; it was his children had the scarlet fever, and mother went
to nurse them. My! but how dismal it was at home! We always got more
whippings when mother was away. Your grandfather was a good man, too
honest for this world, and he loved every one of his seven children;
but he brought us up to fear him and the Lord. We feared him the most,
because the Lord couldn't whip us! He never whipped us when we did