A Red Wallflower. Warner Susan

a long while in the room, when Esther broke it. She had been sitting poring over a book; now she looked up with a very burdened brow and put her question.

      'Papa, how do people get comfort out of the Bible?'

      'Eh – what, my dear?' said the colonel, rousing his attention.

      'What must one do, to get comfort out of the Bible?'

      'Comfort?' repeated the colonel, now looking round at her. 'Are you in want of comfort, Esther?'

      'I would like to know how to find it, papa, if it is here.'

      'Here? What have you got there? Come where I can see you.'

      Esther drew near, unwillingly. 'It is the Bible, papa.'

      'And what is it you want from the Bible? – Comfort?'

      'Mamma used to say one could get comfort in the Bible, and I wanted to know how.'

      'Did she?' said the colonel with grave thoughtfulness. But he said no more. Esther waited. Her father's tone had changed; he seemed to have gone back into regions of the past, and to have forgotten her. The minutes ran on, without her daring to remind him that her question was still unanswered. The colonel at last, with a long sigh, took up his book again; then seemed to bethink him, and turned to Esther.

      'I do not know, my dear,' he said. 'I never could get it there myself, except in a very modified way. Perhaps it is my fault.'

      The subject was disposed of, as far as the colonel was concerned. Esther could ask him no more. But that evening, when Mrs. Barker was attending upon her, she made one more trial.

      'Barker, do you know the Bible much?'

      'The Bible, Miss Esther!'

      'Yes. Have you read it a great deal? do you know what is in it?'

      'Well, Miss Esther, I ain't a heathen. I do read my Bible, to be sure, more or less, all my life, so to speak; which is to say, ever since I could read at all.'

      'Did you ever find comfort in it?'

      'Comfort, Miss Esther? Did I ever find comfort in it, did ye ask?' the housekeeper repeated, very much puzzled. 'Well, I can't just say. Mebbe I never was just particlarly lookin' for that article when I went to my Bible. I don't remember as I never was in no special want o' comfort – sich as should set me to lookin' for it; 'thout it was when missus died.'

      'She said, one could find comfort in the Bible,' Esther went on, with a tender thrill in the voice that uttered the beloved pronoun.

      'Most likely it's so, Miss Esther. What my mistress said was sure and certain true; but myself, it is something which I have no knowledge of.'

      'How do you suppose one could find comfort in the Bible, Barker? How should one look for it?'

      ''Deed, Miss Esther, your questions is too hard for me. I'd ask the colonel, if I was you.'

      'But I ask you, if you can tell me.'

      'And that's just which I ain't wise enough for. But when I don't know where a thing is, Miss Esther, I allays begins at one end and goes clean through to the other end; and then, if the thing ain't there, why I knows it, and if it is there, I gets it.'

      'It would take a good while,' said Esther musingly, 'to go through the whole Bible from one end to the other.'

      'That's which I am thinkin', Miss Esther. I'm thinkin' one might forget what one started to look for, before one found it. But there! the Bible ain't just like a store closet, neither, with all the things ticketed on shelves. I'm thinkin' a body must do summat besides look in it.'

      'What?'

      'I don't know, Miss Esther; I ain't wise, no sort o' way, in sich matters; but I was thinkin' the folks I've seen, as took comfort in their Bibles, they was allays saints.'

      'Saints! What do you mean by that?'

      'That's what they was,' said Barker decidedly. 'They was saints. I never was no saint myself, but I've seen 'em. You see, mum, I've allays had summat else on my mind, and my hands, I may say; and one can't attend to more'n one thing at once in this world. I've allays had my bread to get and my mistress to serve; and I've attended to my business and done it. That's which I've done.'

      'Couldn't you do that and be a saint too?'

      'There's no one can't be two different people at one and the same time,

      Miss Esther. Which I would say, if there is, it ain't me.'

      If this was not conclusive, at least it was unanswerable by Esther, and the subject was dropped. Whether Esther pursued the search after comfort, no one knew; indeed, no one knew she wanted it. The colonel certainly not; he had taken her question to be merely a speculative one. It did sometimes occur to Barker that her young charge moped; or, as she expressed it to Mr. Bounder, 'didn't live as a child had a right to;' but it was not her business, and she had spoken truly: her business was the thing Mrs. Barker minded exclusively.

      So Esther went on living alone, and working her way, as she could, alone, out of all the problems that suggested themselves to her childish mind. What sort of a character would grow up in this way, in such a close mental atmosphere and such absence of all training or guiding influences, was an interesting question, which, however, never presented itself before Colonel Gainsborough's mind. That his child was all right, he was sure; indeed how could she go wrong? She was her mother's daughter, in the first place; and in the next place, his own;noblesse oblige, in more ways than one; and then – she saw nobody! That was a great safeguard. But the one person whom Esther did see, out of her family, or I should say the two persons, sometimes speculated about her; for to them the subject had a disagreeable practical interest. Mr. Dallas came now and then to sit and have a chat with the colonel; and more rarely Mrs. Dallas called for a civil visit of enquiry; impelled thereto partly by her son's instances and reminders. She communicated her views to her husband.

      'She is living a dreadful life, for a child. She will be everything that is unnatural and premature.'

      Mr. Dallas made no answer.

      'And I wish she was out of Seaforth; for as we cannot get rid of her, we must send away our own boy.'

      'Humph!' said her husband. 'Are you sure? Is that a certain necessity?'

      'Hildebrand, you would like to have him finish his studies at Oxford?' said his wife appealingly.

      'Yes, to be sure; but what has that to do with the other thing? You started from that little girl over there.'

      'Do you want Pitt to make her his wife?'

      'No!' with quiet decision.

      'He'll do it; if you do not take all the better care.'

      'I don't see that it follows.'

      'You do not see it, Hildebrand, but I do. Trust me.'

      'What do you reason from?'

      'You won't trust me? Well, the girl will be very handsome; she'll bevery handsome, and that always turns a young man's head; and then, you see, she is a forlorn child, and Pitt has taken it in to his head to replace father and mother, and be her good genius. I leave you to judge if that is not a dangerous part for him to play. He writes to me every now and then about her.'

      Not very often; but Mrs. Dallas wanted to scare her husband. And so there came to be more and more talk about Pitt's going abroad; and Esther felt as if the one spot of brightness in her sky were closing up for ever. If Pitt did go, – what would be left?

      It was a token of the real strength and fine properties of her mental nature, that the girl did not, in any true sense, mope. In want of comfort she was; in sad want of social diversion and cheer, and of variety in her course of thought and occupation; she suffered from the want; but Esther did not sink into idleness and stagnation. She worked like a beaver; that is, so far as diligence and purpose characterize those singular animals' working. She studied resolutely and eagerly the things she had studied with Pitt, and which he had charged her to go on with. His influence was a spur to her constantly; for he had wished it, and he would be coming home by and by for the long vacation, and then he would want to see what she had done. Esther