as might be.

On Henry's going away, the three girls had promptly bespoken the
reversion of his study as a little sitting-room for themselves. Here
they concentrated their books, and some few pictures that appealed to
tastes in revolt against Atlantic liners, but not yet developed to the
appreciation of those true classics of art--to which indeed they had yet
to be introduced. Such half-way masters as Leighton, Alma-Tadema, Sant,
and Dicksee were as yet to them something of what Rossetti and
Burne-Jones, and certain old Italian masters, were soon to become. In
books, they had already learnt from Henry a truer, or at all events a
more strenuous, taste; and they would grapple manfully with Carlyle and
Browning, and presently Meredith, long before their lives had use or
understanding for such tremendous nourishment.

One evening, as they were all three sitting cosily in Henry's study,--as
they still faithfully called it,--Esther was reading "Pride and
Prejudice" aloud, while Dot and Mat busied themselves respectively with
"macrame" work and a tea-cosy against a coming bazaar. Esther's tasks in
the house were somewhat illustrated by her part in the trio this
evening. Her energies were mainly devoted to "the higher nights" of
housekeeping, to the aesthetic activities of the home,--arranging
flowers, dusting vases and pictures, and so on,--and the lightness of
these employments was, it is to be admitted, an occasionally raised
grievance among the sisters. To Dot and Mat fell much more arduous and
manual spheres of labour. Yet all were none the less grateful for the
decorative innovations which Esther, acting on occasional hints from her
friend Myrtilla Williamson, was able to make; and if it were true that
she hardly took her fair share of bed-making and pastry-cooking, it was
equally undeniable that to her was due the introduction of Liberty silk
curtains and cushions in two or three rooms. She too--alas, for the
mistakes of young taste!--had also introduced painted tambourines, and
swathed the lamps in wonderful turbans of puffed tissue paper. Was she
to receive no credit for these services? Then it was she who had dared
to do battle with her mother's somewhat old-fashioned taste in dress;
and whenever the Mesurier sisters came out in something specially pretty
or fashionable, it was due to Esther.

Well, on this particular evening, she was, as we have said, taking her
share in the housework by reading "Jane Austen" alou