misty eyes.

"Never mind, dear," coaxed comforting Angela, "don't you fret. Essie is as
glad as either of us, _really_, and by and by she will be all right.
Let us go out on the moor, and talk over what we will do when you are
rich, shall we?"

"Yes," said Penelope, with a little sigh, and a shake to shake off her
gloom. "Dear old moor, I feel I want to lie down on it and hug it when
big, nice things happen, and tell it all about them. Come along, Angel."

Esther, from upstairs, saw them go out together, Angela's arm about Pen's
waist, Penelope's arm about Angela's shoulders. With angry eyes and
aching heart she watched them go through the garden, and guessed whither
they were bound; and a sense of loneliness, of being shut out, stole over
her.

Cousin Charlotte had gone to Gorley and taken Poppy with her, so she was
quite alone. With a hasty movement she flung on her hat, and dashed
downstairs and out of the front door. "If they went out, she could go out
too," she told herself angrily, and could find her own company sufficient.
If they went one way she would go another, the moor was large enough,
and--and at any rate the tors and the gorse and the birds liked her as
much as they liked Penelope. She would not there be put aside for her
younger sister.

By that time she had worked herself up into such a state of resentfulness
of imagined injuries and fancied wrongs, she felt she could hardly endure
her unhappy lot. She walked along the road in a perfect turmoil of mind,
and, fearing she might meet some one, turned down towards the bridge and
the river; but the weather had been rainy lately, and the river was
swollen, and the bank all wet and slippery.

She had never been further than the bridge and the river-bank before,
and as she clambered up from the muddy, slippery river-path, and pushed
through the sheltering brushwood which lined it, she found herself, a tiny
speck, apparently the only living creature, in a huge great stretch of
moorland which was all new ground to her. There were a few big rocks here
and there, but no big hills, as on the other side, with their friendly
sheltering look; and the great stretch of bare land, stretching away and
away, looked the picture of desolation.

The spirit of it seemed in tune with Esther's own sense of loneliness; but
it touched her heart with the softening touch of sadness. She sank down
on a big boulder beside her, and, stretching out her arms on its rough,
li