ne of these days
you will have to be useful whether you like it or not, and now you are
doing enough if you are only ornamental. I know you will hold your
tongue at the board meetings, and that is real usefulness."

"Very well, aunt! I can do that. And I can go on cutting out dolls'
clothes for the children, though Mrs. Dyer will complain that my dolls
are not sufficiently dressed. I wish I did not respect people for
despising me."

"If we did not, there would be no Mrs. Dyers," answered her aunt. "She
is a terrible woman. I feel always like a sort of dry lamp-wick when she
has left me. Never mind! I have something else now to talk about. I want
you to make yourself useful in a harder path."

"Not another Charity Board, aunt," said Esther rather piteously.

"Worse!" said Mrs. Murray. "A charity girl! Thirty years ago I had a
dear friend who was also a friend of your poor mother's. Her name was
Catherine Cortright. She married a man named Brooke, and they went west,
and they kept going further and further west until at length they
reached Colorado, where she died, leaving one daughter, a child of ten
years old. The father married again and had a new family. Very lately he
has died, leaving the girl with her step-mother and half-sisters. She is
unhappy there; they seem to have brought her up in a strict Presbyterian
kind of way, and she does not like it. Mr. Murray is an executor under
her father's will, and when she comes of age in a few months, she will
have a little independent property. She has asked me to look after her
till then, and is coming on at once to make me a visit."

"You are always doing something for somebody," said Esther. "What do you
expect her to be, and how long will she stay?"

"I don't expect any thing, my dear, and my heart sinks whenever I think
of her. My letters say she is amiable and pretty; but if she is a
rattlesnake, I must take her in, and you must help to amuse her."

"I will do all I can," replied Esther. "Don't be low about it. She can't
be as bad as Mrs. Dyer even if she is a rattlesnake. If she is pretty,
and turns out well, we will make George marry her."

"I wish we might," said her aunt.

Esther went her way and thought no more of the orphan, but Mrs. Murray
carried the weight of all New York on her mind. Not the least of her
anxieties was the condition of her brother-in-law, Esther's father. He
was now a confirmed invalid, grateful for society and amusement, and
almost e