In her healthy and
happy youth, busy life, and mental and spiritual growth and thrift,
Esther's wants seemed to be all satisfied; and so long as things ran
their ordinary course, she felt no deficiency. But there are conditions
in which one is warm so long as one does not move, while the first stir
of change brings a chill over one. And so sometimes now, as Esther
entered Major Street or set her face towards it, she would think of her
far-off circle of Gainsborough cousins, with a half wish that her
father could have borne with them a little more patiently; and once or
twice the thought came too, that the Dallases never let themselves be
heard from any more. Not even Pitt. She would not have thought it of
him, but he was away in a foreign country, and it must be that he had
forgotten them. His father and mother were near, and could not forget;
was not the old house there before them always to remind them? But they
were rich and prosperous and abounding in everything; they had no need
of the lonely two who had gone out of their sight and who did need
them. It was the way of the world; so the world said. Esther wondered
if that were really true, and also wondered now and then if Major
Street were to be henceforth not only the sphere but the limit of her
existence. She never gave such thoughts harbour; they came and they
went; and she remained the cheerful, brave, busy girl she had long been.

The small house at last looked homelike. On the front room Esther had
put a warm, dark-looking carpet; the chintz curtains were up and in
harmony with the carpet; and the colonel's lounge was new covered with
the same stuff. The old furniture had been arranged so as to give that
pleasant cosy air to the room which is such a welcome to the person
entering it, making the impression of comfort and good taste and of the
habit of good living; not good living in matters of the table, but in
those other matters which concern the mind's nourishment and social
well-being. Everything was right and in order, and Esther surveyed her
work with much content.

'It looks _very_ nice,' she said to her good friend the housekeeper.

'It do, mum,' Mrs. Barker answered, with a reservation. 'But I'm
thinkin', Miss Esther, I can't stop thinkin', whatever'll the colonel
say when he sees the outside.'

'He shall see the inside first. I have arranged that. And, Barker, we
must have a capital supper ready for him. We can afford it now. Have a
pheasant, Bar