head; and then,
you see, she is a forlorn child, and Pitt has taken it in to his head
to replace father and mother, and be her good genius. I leave you to
judge if that is not a dangerous part for him to play. He writes to me
every now and then about her.'

Not very often; but Mrs. Dallas wanted to scare her husband. And so
there came to be more and more talk about Pitt's going abroad; and
Esther felt as if the one spot of brightness in her sky were closing up
for ever. If Pitt did go,--what would be left?

It was a token of the real strength and fine properties of her mental
nature, that the girl did not, in any true sense, _mope_. In want of
comfort she was; in sad want of social diversion and cheer, and of
variety in her course of thought and occupation; she suffered from the
want; but Esther did not sink into idleness and stagnation. She worked
like a beaver; that is, so far as diligence and purpose characterize
those singular animals' working. She studied resolutely and eagerly the
things she had studied with Pitt, and which he had charged her to go on
with. His influence was a spur to her constantly; for he had wished it,
and he would be coming home by and by for the long vacation, and then
he would want to see what she had done. Esther was not quite alone, so
long as she had the thought of Pitt and of that long vacation with her.
If he should go to England,--then indeed it would be loneliness. Now
she studied, at any rate, having that spur; and she studied things also
with which Pitt had had no connection; her Bible, for instance. The
girl busied herself with fancy work too, every kind which Mrs. Barker
could teach her, and her father did not forbid. And in one other
pleasure her father was helpful to her. Esther had been trying to draw
some little things, working eagerly with her pencil and a copy,
absorbed in her endeavours and in the delight of partial success; when
one day her father came and looked over her shoulder. That was enough.
Colonel Gainsborough was a great draughtsman; the old instinct of his
art stirred in him; he took Esther's pencil from her hand and showed
her how she ought to use it, and then went on to make several little
studies for her to work at. From that beginning, the lessons went
forward, to the mutual benefit of father and daughter. Esther developed
a great aptitude for the art, and an enormous zeal. Whatever her father
told her it would be good for her to do, in that connection, Est