r of a cat
dipping her foot into a wash-tub,--(not that I mean to say anything
against them, for, when they are of tinted porcelain or starry
many-faceted crystal, and hold clean bright berries, or pale virgin
honey, or "lucent syrups tinct with cinnamon," and the teaspoon is of
white silver, with the Tower-stamp, solid, but not brutally heavy,--as
people in the green stage of millionism will have them,--I can dally
with their amber semi-fluids or glossy spherules without a
shiver,)--you know these small, deep dishes, I say. When we came down
the next morning, each of these (two only excepted) was covered with a
broad leaf. On lifting this, each boarder found a small heap of solemn
black huckleberries. But one of those plates held red currants, and was
covered with a red rose; the other held white currants, and was covered
with a white rose. There was a laugh at this at first, and then a short
silence, and I noticed that her lip trembled, and the old gentleman
opposite was in trouble to get at his bandanna handkerchief.

--"What was the use in waiting? We should be too late for Switzerland,
that season, if we waited much longer."--The hand I held trembled in
mine, and the eyes fell meekly, as Esther bowed herself before the feet
of Ahasuerus.--She had been reading that chapter, for she looked
up,--if there was a film of moisture over her eyes, there was also the
faintest shadow of a distant smile skirting her lips, but not enough to
accent the dimples,--and said, in her pretty, still way,--"If it please
the king, and if I have found favor in his sight, and the thing seem
right before the king, and I be pleasing in his eyes"--

I don't remember what King Ahasuerus did or said when Esther got just
to that point of her soft, humble words,--but I know what I did. That
quotation from Scripture was cut short, anyhow. We came to a
compromise on the great question, and the time was settled for the last
day of summer.

In the mean time, I talked on with our boarders, much as usual, as you
may see by what I have reported. I must say, I was pleased with a
certain tenderness they all showed toward us, after the first
excitement of the news was over. It came out in trivial matters,--but
each one, in his or her way, manifested kindness. Our landlady, for
instance, when we had chickens, sent the _liver_ instead of the
_gizzard_, with the wing, for the schoolmistress. This was not an
accident: the two are _never_ mistaken, though so