ould you perhaps
let me have a sixpence? I don't like to send and ask a stranger like
that to wait for what's no more'n twopence at home.'

'Wait?' repeated Esther. 'Didn't papa give you money for the
housekeeping this week?'

'Miss Esther, he did; but--I haven't a cent.'

'Why? He did not give you as much as usual?'

The housekeeper hesitated, with a troubled face.

'Miss Esther, he did give me as much as usual,--I would say, as much as
he uses to give me nowadays; but that ain't the old sum, and it ain't
possible to do the same things wi' it.' And Mrs. Barker looked
anxiously and doubtfully at her young mistress. 'I wouldn't like to
tell ye, mum; but in course ye must know, or ye'd maybe be doubtful o'
_me_.'

'Of course I should know!' repeated Esther. 'Papa must have forgotten.
I will see about it. Give me a basket, Barker, and I will go over to
the garden myself and get a head of lettuce,--now, before I take my
things off. I would like to go.'

Seeing that she spoke truth, Mrs. Barker's scruples gave way. She
furnished the basket, and Esther set forth. There was but a field or
two to cross, intervening between her own ground and the slopes where
the beds of the market garden lay trim and neat in the sun. Or, rather,
to-day, in the warm, hazy, soft October light; the sun's rays could not
rightly get through the haze. It was one of the delicious times of
October weather, which the unlearned are wont to call Indian summer,
but which is not that, and differs from it essentially. The glory of
the Indian summer is wholly ethereal; it belongs to the light and the
air; and is a striking image and eloquent testimony of how far spirit
can overmaster matter. The earth is brown, the trees are bare; the
drapery and the colours of summer are all gone; and then comes the
Indian summer, and makes one forget that the foregoing summer had its
glories at all, so much greater is the glory now. There is no sense of
bareness any longer, and no missing of gay tints, nor of the song of
birds, nor of anything else in which June revelled and August showed
its rich maturity; only the light and the air, filling the world with
such unearthly loveliness that the looker-on holds his breath, and the
splendour of June is forgotten. This October day was not after such a
fashion; it was steeped in colour. Trees near at hand showed yellow and
purple and red; the distant Jersey shore was a strip of warm, sunburnt
tints, merged into one; over