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" aloud to Dot and Mat;
when the door suddenly opened, and James Mesurier stood there, a little
aloof,--for it was seldom he entered this room, which perhaps had for
him a certain painful association of his son's rebellion. Perhaps, too,
the picture of this happy little corner of his children--a world
evidently so complete in itself, and daily developing more and more away
from the parent world in the front parlour--gave him a certain pang of
estrangement. Perhaps he too felt as he looked on them that same dreary
sense of disintegration which had overtaken the mother on Henry's
departure; and perhaps there was something of that in his voice, as,
looking at them with rather a sad smile, he said,--

"You look very comfortable here, children. I hope that's a profitable
book you are reading, Esther."