ed with no change from morning to night
and from one week to another? Always Colonel Gainsborough there on the
sofa; always that same green cloth covering the table in the middle of
the floor, and the view of the snow-covered garden and road and fields
outside the windows, with those everlasting pollard poplars along the
fence. While Europe was in commotion, and armies rolling their masses
over it, and Napoleon fleeing and Lord Wellington chasing, and every
breath was full of eagerness and hope and triumph and purpose in that
world without.

Esther fell back into a kind of despair. Pitt was gone from her; now
she realized that fact thoroughly; not only gone in person, but moved
far off in mind. Maybe he might write again, once or twice; very likely
he would, for he was kind; but his life was henceforth separated from
Seaforth and from all the other life that had its home there. The old
cry for comfort began to sound in Esther's heart with a terrible
urgency. Where was it to come from? And as the child had only one
possible outlook for comfort, she began to set her face that way in a
kind of resolute determination. That is, she began to shut herself up
with her Bible and search it as a man who is poor searches for a hid
treasure, or as one who is starving looks for something to eat. Nobody
knew. She shut herself up and carried on her search alone, and troubled
nobody with questions. Nobody ever noticed the air of the child; the
grave, far-away look of her eyes; the pale face; the unnaturally quiet
demeanour. At least nobody noticed it to any purpose. Mrs. Barker did
communicate to Christopher her belief that that child was 'mopin'
herself into ninety years old;' and they were both agreed that she
ought to be sent to school. 'A girl don't grow just like one o' my
cabbages,' said Mr. Bounder; '_that_'ll make a head for itself.'

'Miss Esther's got a head,' put in Mrs. Barker.

''Twon't be solid and that, if it ain't looked after,' retorted her
brother. 'I don't s'pose you understand the natural world, though.
What's the colonel thinkin' about?'

'That ain't your and my business, Christopher. But I do worrit myself
about Miss Esther's face, the way I sees it sometimes.'

The colonel, it is true, did not see it as Mrs. Barker saw it. Not but
that he might, if he had ever watched her. But he did not watch. It
never occurred to him but that everything went right with Esther. When
she made him his tea, she was attentive an