match for my daughter, not such a husband as your sisters have."
Esther's lip quivered and her color rose again; but she did not speak.
"Still I will say that I think a fellow who can make his own
fortune is better than a man with twice that fortune made for him.
My dear, if Lossing has the right stuff in him and he is a real
good fellow, I shan't make you go into a decline by objecting;
but you see it is a big shock to me, and you must let me get
used to it, and let me size the young man up in my own way.
There is another thing, Esther; I am going to Europe Thursday,
that will give me just a day in Chicago if I go to-morrow,
and I wish you would come with me. Will you mind?"

Either she changed her seat or she started at the proposal.
But how could she say that she wanted to stay in America
with a man who had not said a formal word of love to her?
"I can get ready, I think, papa," said Esther.

They drove on. He felt a crawling pain in his heart, for he loved his
daughter Esther as he had loved no other child of his; and he knew that
he had hurt her. Naturally, he grew the more angry at the impertinent
young man who was the cause of the flitting; for the whole European
plan had been cooked up since the receipt of Mrs. Ellis's letter.
They were on the very street down which he used to walk (for it
takes the line of the hills) when he was a poor boy, a struggling,
ferociously ambitious young man. He looked at the changed rows
of buildings, and other thoughts came uppermost for a moment.
"It was here father's church used to stand; it's gone, now," he said.
"It was a wood church, painted a kind of gray; mother had a bonnet
the same color, and she used to say she matched the church.
I bought it with the very first money I earned. Part of it came