om.

The load of such deceptions upon her conscience was not heavy. There was
only the kindly Top Floor Front, the janitor, and Rebecca Einstein, who
lived next door, and who was in Esther's class at school, when she was
not nursing old and new babies at home.

Mrs. Moriarty disapproved of the Einsteins. Her complaint was that there
were too many of them, and that thirteen was an unlucky number for a
party, whether family or otherwise. But to Esther their number was their
greatest charm, and after a visit to their crowded and uproarious
circle, the quiet drawing-room seemed very chill and empty.

When Jacob came home that night, Esther was awake and waiting for him
with a proposition.

The Einsteins, she announced, had a superfluous baby. Would not he, out
of his loving bounty, buy it for her? It was a boy, and she, Esther,
desired beyond all things else a baby brother. She had reason to believe
that this one was really hers. She had forwarded an application to the
proper quarters.

Jacob took his little girl on his knee and explained the situation to
her.

Purchase, so his instructions ran, was not the usual method of acquiring
infants. One took them, or did without them, as the big Stork pleased.
It is true that babies sometimes were adopted. If, when she grew a
little older and he a little richer, she still desired a brother, they
might manage to adopt one, but not, as he told her when he restored her
to her crib, not until he had found her Aunt Esther.

And when he had eaten his supper he came again to Esther's little bed
and told her, as he sometimes did, stories of another little brother and
sister who had loved and played together in the long ago. And he told
her, too, more graphically than Mrs. Moriarty could, of that brother's
desperate search for his sister. Of all the promising clews which led
nowhere; of all the high hopes which ended in despair. For two months he
had neglected his business and his daughter for this search, and he was
beginning to believe that his sister was dead.

Esther caressed and comforted him as best she might, and after holding
her silently for a few moments, he carefully tucked her into bed again,
and went out into the crowded, sordid streets, to search--hopelessly and
doggedly--for the little sister of his childhood.

As the days passed and her father confided more and more in her great
love and sympathy, Esther became reconciled to the Stork's mistake, and
decided that s