the little girl at this strange softness in the mighty, while the dawn
of a wonderful pity for the lot of woman had, unconsciously, broken in
the soul of the boy.

"Kiss me again, Esther," he had said, and, with the tears that mingled
in that kiss, an eternal friendship was baptized.

Henry rose on the morrow a changed being. The grosser pretensions of the
male had fallen from him for ever, and there was at first something
almost awe-inspiring to his sisters in the gentle solicitude for them
and their rights and pleasures which replaced the old despotism. From
that time, Esther and he became closer and closer companions, and as
they more and more formed an oligarchy of two, a rearrangement of
parties in the little parliament of home came about, to be upset again
as Dot and Mat qualified for admission into that exclusive
little circle.

So soon as Henry had a new dream or a new thought, he shared it with
Esther; and freely as he had received from Carlyle, or Emerson, or
Thoreau, freely he passed it on to her. For the gloomiest occasion he
had some strengthening text, and one of the last things he did before he
left home was to make for her a little book which he called "Faith for
Cloudy Days," consisting of energising and sustaining phrases from
certain great writers,--as it were, a bottle of philosophical phosphates
against seasons of spiritual cowardice or debility. There one opened and
read: "_Sudden the worst turns best to the brave_" or Thoreau's "_I have
yet to hear a single word of wisdom spoken to me by my elders,_" or
again Matthew Arnold's

"_Tasks in hours of insight willed