The colonel considered the subject now in a quieter mood, discussed it a little further, and finally agreed to drive into town and see what he could find in the way of a house.

CHAPTER XXX
A HOUSE

Yet the colonel did not go. Days passed, and he did not go. Esther ventured some gentle reminders, which had no effect. And the winter was gone and the spring was come, before he made the first expedition to the city in search of a house. Once started on his quest, it is true the colonel carried it on vigorously, and made many journeys for it; but they were all in vain. Rents in the city were found to be so much higher than rents in the country as fully to neutralize the advantage hoped for in a smaller household and the dismissal of the horse. Not a dwelling could be found where this would not be true. The search was finally given up; and things in the little family went on as they had been going for some time past.

Esther at last, under stress of necessity, made fresh representations to her father, and besought leave to give lessons. They were running into debt, with no means of paying. It went sorely against the grain with the colonel to give his consent; pride and tenderness both rebelled; he hesitated long, but circumstances were too much for him. He yielded at last, not with a groan, but with many groans.

'I came here to take care of you,' he said; 'and this is the end of it!'

'Don't take it so, papa,' cried Esther. 'I like to do it. It is not a hardship.'

'It is a hardship,' he retorted; 'and you will find it so. I find it so now.'

'Even so, papa,' said the girl, with infinite sweetness; 'suppose it be a hardship, the Lord has given it to me; and so long as I am sure it is something He has given, I want no better. Indeed, papa, you know Icould have no better.'

'I know nothing of the kind. You are talking folly.'

'No, papa, if you please. Just remember, – look here, papa, – here are the words. Listen: "The Lord God is a sun and shield; the Lord will give grace and glory; no good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly."'

'Do you mean to tell me,' said the colonel angrily, 'that – well, that all the things that you have not just now, and ought to have, are not good things?'

'Not good for me, or at least not the best, or I should have them.'

This answer was with a smile so absolutely shadowless, that the colonel found nothing to answer but a groan, which was made up of pain and pride and pleasure in inscrutable proportions.

The next step was to speak to Miss Fairbairn. That wise woman showed no surprise, and did not distress Esther with any sympathy; she took it as the most natural thing in the world that her favourite pupil should wish to become a teacher; and promised her utmost help. In her own school there was now no longer any opening; that chance was gone; but she gave Esther a recommendation in person to the principal of another establishment, where in consequence Miss Gainsborough found ready acceptance.

And now indeed she felt herself a stranger, and found herself alone. This was a different thing from her first entering school as a pupil. And Esther began also presently to perceive that her father had not been entirely wrong in his estimate of a teacher's position and experiences. It is not a path of roses that such a one has to tread; and even the love she may bear to those she teaches, and even the genuine love of teaching them, do not avail to make it so. Woe to the teacher who has not those two alleviations and helps to fall back upon! Esther soon found both; and yet she gave her father credit for having known more about the matter than she did. She was truly alone now; the children loved her, but scattered away from her as soon as their tasks were done; her fellow-teachers she scarcely saw – they were busy and jaded; and with the world outside of school she had nothing to do. She had never had much to do with it; yet at Miss Fairbairn's she had sometimes a little taste of society that was of high order, and all in the house had been at least well known to her and she to them, even if no particular congeniality had drawn them together. She had lost all that now. And it sometimes came over Esther in those days the thought of her English aunts and cousins, as a vision of strange pleasantness. To have plenty of friends and relations, of one's own blood, and therefore inalienable; well-bred and refined and cultivated (whereby I am afraid Esther's fancy made them a multiplication of Pitt Dallas), – it looked very alluring! She went bravely about her work, and did it beautifully, and was very contented in it, and relieved to be earning money; yet these visions now and again would come over her mind, bringing a kind of distant sunshiny glow with them, different from the light that fell on that particular bit of life's pathway she was treading just then. They came and went; what came and did not go was Esther's consciousness that she was earning only a little money, and that with that little she could not clear off all the debts that had accrued and were constantly accruing. When she had paid the butcher, the grocer's bill presented itself, and when she had after some delay got rid of that, then came the need for a fresh supply of coal. Esther spent nothing on her own dress that she could help, but her father's was another matter, and tailors' charges she found were heavy. She went bravely on; she was young and full of spirit, and she was a Christian and full of confidence; nevertheless she did begin to feel the worry of these petty, gnawing, money cares, which have broken the heart of so many a woman before her. Moreover, another thing demanded consideration. It was necessary, now that she had no longer a home with Miss Fairbairn, that she should go into town and come back every day, and, furthermore, as she was giving lessons in a school, no circumstance of weather or anything else must hinder her being absolutely punctual. Yet Esther foresaw that as the winter came on again it would be very difficult sometimes to maintain this punctuality; and it became clear to her that it would be almost indispensable for them to move into town. If only a house could be found!

Meantime Christopher went and came about the house, cultivated the garden and took care of the horse and drove Esther to school, all just as usual; his whilome master never having as yet said one word to him on the subject of his marriage and consequent departure. Whether his wages were paid him, Esther was anxiously doubtful; but she dared not ask. I say 'whilome' master, for there is no doubt that Mr. Bounder in these days felt that nobody was his master but himself. He did all his duties faithfully, but then he took leave to cross the little field which lay between his old home and his new, and to disappear for whole spaces of time from the view of the colonel's family.

It was one evening in November. Mrs. Barker was just sitting down to her tea, and Christopher was preparing himself to leave her. I should remark that Mrs. Barker had called on the former Mrs. Blumenfeld, and established civil relations between the houses.

'Won't you stay, Christopher?' asked his sister.

'No, thank ye. I've got a little woman over there, who's expecting me.'

'Does she set as good a table for you as I used to do? in those days when I could?' the housekeeper added, with a sigh.

'Well, she ain't just up to some o' your arts,' said Christopher, with a contented face, in which his blue eye twinkled with a little slyness; 'but I'll tell you what, she can cook a dish o' pot-pie that you can't beat, nor nobody else; and her rye bread is just uncommon!'

'Rye bread!' said the housekeeper, with an utterance of disdain.

'I'll bring a loaf over,' said Christopher, nodding his head; 'and you can give some to Miss Esther if you like. Good-night!'

He made few steps of it through the dark cold evening to the house that had become his home. The room that received him might have pleased a more difficult man. It was as clean as hands could make it; bright with cleanliness, lighted and warmed with a glowing fire, and hopeful with a most savoury scent of supper. The mistress of the house was busy about her hearth, looking neat and comfortable enough to match her room. As Christopher came in she lit a candle that stood on the supper-table. Christopher hugged himself at this instance of his wife's thrift, and sat down.

'You've got something that smells uncommon good there!' said he approvingly.

'I allays du think a hot supper's comfortable at the end o' a cold day,' returned the new Mrs. Bounder. 'I don't care what I du as long's I'm busy with all the world all the day long; I kin take a piece and a bite and go on, but when it comes night, and I hev time to think I'm tired, then I like a good hot something or other.'

'What have you got there?' said Christopher, peering over at the dish on the hearth which Mrs. Bounder was filling from a pot before the fire. She laughed.

'You wouldn't be any wiser ef I told you. It's a little o' everything. Give me a good garden, and I kin live as well as I want to, and cost no one more'n a few shillin's, neither. 'Tain't difficult, ef you know how. Now see what you say to that.'

She dished up her supper, put a plate of green pickles on the table, filled up her tea-pot, and cut some slices from a beautiful brown loaf, which must have rivalled the rye, though it was not that colour. Christopher sat down, said grace reverently, and attacked the viands, while the mistress poured him out a cup of tea.

'Christopher,' she said, as she handed it to him, 'I'd jes' like to ask you something.'

'What is it?'

'I'd like to know jes' why you go through that performance?'

'Performance?' echoed Christopher. 'What are you talkin' about?'

'I mean, that bit of a prayer you think it is right to make whenever you're goin' to put your fork to your mouth.'

'Oh! I couldn't imagine what you were driving at. Why do I do it?'

'I'd like to know, ef you think you kin tell.'

'Respectable folk always does it.'

'Hm! I don' know about that. So it's for respectability you keep it up?'

'No,' said Christopher, a little embarrassed how to answer. 'It's proper. Don't you know the Bible bids us give thanks?'

'Wall, hev you set out to du all the rest o' the things the Bible bids you du? – that's jes' what I'm comin' to.'

A surly man would not perhaps have answered at all, resenting this catechizing; but Christopher was not surly, and not at all offended. He was perplexed a little; looked at his wife in some sly wonder at her, but answered not.

'Ef I began, I'd go through. I wouldn't make no half way with it; that's all I was goin' to say,' his wife went on, with a grave face that showed she was not jesting.

'It's saying a good deal!' remarked Christopher, still looking at her.

'It's sayin' a good deal, to make the first prayer; but ef I made the first one, I'd make all the rest. I don't abide no half work in mygarden, Christopher; that's what I was thinkin'; and I don't believe Him you pray to likes it no better.'

Christopher was utterly unprepared to go on with this subject; and finally gave up trying, and attended to his supper. After a little while his wife struck a new theme. She was not a trained rhetorician; but when she had said what she had to say she was always contented to stop.

'How are things going up your way to-day?' she asked.

'My way is down here, I'm happy to say.'

'Wall, up to the colonel's, then. What's the news?'

'Ain't no sort o' news. Never is. They're always at the old things. The colonel he lies on his sofy, and Miss Esther she goes and comes. They want to get a house in town, now she's goin' so regular, only they can't find one to fit.'

'Kin't find a house? I thought there was houses enough in all New York.'

'Houses enough, but they all is set up so high in their rents, you see.'

'Is that the trouble?'

'That is exactly the trouble; and Miss Esther, I can see, she doesn't know just what to do.'

'They ain't gittin' along well, Christopher?'

'Well, there is no doubt they ain't! I should say they was gettin' on uncommon bad. Don't seem as if they could any way pay up all their bills at once. They pay this man, and then run up a new score with some other man. Miss Esther, she tries all she knows; but there ain't no one to help her.'

'They git this house cheaper than they'd git any one in town, I guess.

They'd best stay where they be.'

'Yes, but you see, Miss Esther has to go and come every day now; she's teachin' in a school, that's what she is,' said Christopher, letting his voice drop as if he were speaking of some desecration. 'That's what she is; and so she has to be there regular, rain or shine makes no difference. An' if they was in town, you see, they wouldn't want the horse, nor me.'

'You don't cost 'em nothin'!' returned Mrs. Bounder.

'No; but they don't know that; and if they knowed it, you see, there'd be the devil to pay.'

'I wouldn't give myself bad names, ef I was you,' remarked Mrs. Bounder quietly. 'Christopher' —

'What then?'

'I'm jes' thinkin'' —

'What are you thinkin' about?'

'Jes' you wait till I know myself, and I'll tell ye.'

Christopher was silent, watching from time to time his spouse, who seemed to be going on with her supper in orderly fashion. Mr. Bounder was not misled by this, and watched curiously. He had acquired in a few months a large respect for his wife. Her very unadorned attire, and her peculiar way of knotting up her hair, did not hinder that he had a great and growing value for her. Christopher would have liked her certainly to dress better and to put on a cap; nevertheless, and odd as it may seem, he was learning to be proud of his very independent wife, and even boasted to his sister that she was a 'character.' Now he waited for what was to come next.

'I guess I was a fool,' began Mrs. Bounder at last. 'But it came into my head, ef they're in such a fix as you say, whether maybe they wouldn't take up with my house. I guess, hardly likely.'

'Your house?' inquired Christopher, in astonishment. But his wife calmly nodded.

'Your house!' repeated Christopher. 'Which one?'

'Wall, not this one, I guess,' said his wife quietly. 'But I've got one in town.'

'A house in town! Why, I never heard of it before.'

'No, 'cause it's been standin' empty for a spell back, doin' nothin'. Ef there had been rent comin' in, I guess you'd have heard of it. But the last folks went out; and I hadn't found no one that suited me to let hev it.'

'Would it do for the colonel and Miss Esther?'

'That's jes' what I don' know, Christopher. It would du as fur's the rent goes; an' it's all right and tight. It won't let the rain in on 'em; I've kep' it in order.'

'I should like to see what you don't keep in order!' said Christopher admiringly.

'Wall, I guess it's my imagination. For, come to think of it, it ain't jes' sich a house as your folks are accustomed to.'

'The thing is,' said Christopher gravely, 'they can't have just what they're accustomed to. Leastways I'm afeard they can't. I'll just speak to Miss Esther about it.'

'Wall, you kin du that. 'Twon't du no harm. I allays think, when anybody's grown poor he'd best take in his belt a little.'

CHAPTER XXXI
MAJOR STREET

According to the conclusion thus arrived at, Christopher took the opportunity of speaking to Esther the very next time he was driving her in from school. Esther immediately pricked up her ears, and demanded to know where the house was situated. Christopher told her. It was a street she was not acquainted with.

'Do you know how to find the place, Christopher?'

'Oh, yes, Miss Esther; I can find the place, to be sure; but I'm afraid my little woman has made a mistake.'

'What is the rent?'

Christopher named the rent. It was less than what they were paying for the house they at present occupied; and Esther at once ordered Christopher to turn about and drive her to the spot.

It was certainly not a fashionable quarter, not even near Broadway or State Street; nevertheless it was respectable, inhabited by decent people. The house itself was a small wooden one. Now it is true that at that day New York was a very different place from what it is at present; and a wooden house, and even a small wooden house, did not mean then what it means now; an abode of Irish washerwomen, or of something still less distinguished. Yet Esther startled a little at the thought of bringing her father and herself to inhabit it. Christopher had the key; and he fastened Buonaparte, and let Esther in, and went all over the house with her. It was in order, truly, as its owner had said; even clean; and nothing was off the hinges or wanting paint or needing plaster. 'Right and tight' it was, and susceptible of being made an abode of comfort; yet it was a very humble dwelling, comparatively, and in an insignificant neighbourhood; and Esther hesitated. Was it pride? she asked herself. Why did she hesitate? Yet she lingered over the place, doubting and questioning and almost deciding it would not do. Then Christopher, I cannot tell whether consciously or otherwise, threw in a makeweight that fell in the scale that was threatening to rise.

'If you please, Miss Esther, would you speak to the master about the blacksmith's bill? I don't hardly never see the colonel, these days.'

Esther faced round upon him. The word 'bill' always came to her now like a sort of stab. She repeated his words. 'The blacksmith's bill?'

'Yes, mum; that is, Creasy, the blacksmith; just on the edge o' the town. It's been runnin' along, 'cause I never could get sight o' the colonel to speak to him about it.'

'Bill for what?'

'Shoes, mum.'

'Shoes?' repeated Esther. 'The blacksmith? What do you mean?'

'Shoes for Buonaparty, mum. He does kick off his shoes as fast as any horse ever I see; and they does wear, mum, on the stones.'

'How much is the bill?'

'Well, mum,' said Christopher uneasily, 'it's been runnin' along – and it's astonishin' how things does mount up. It's quite a good bit, mum; it's nigh on to fifty dollars.'

It took away Esther's breath. She turned away, that Christopher might not see her face, and began to look at the house as if a sudden new light had fallen upon it. Small and mean, and unfit for Colonel Gainsborough and his daughter, – that had been her judgment concerning it five minutes before; but now it suddenly presented itself as a refuge from distress. If they took it, the relief to their finances would be immediate and effectual. There was a little bit of struggle in Esther's mind; to give up their present home for this would involve a loss of all the prettiness in which she had found such refreshment; there would be here no river and no opposite shore, and no pleasant country around with grass and trees and a flower garden. There would be no garden at all, and no view, except of a very humdrum little street, built up and inhabited by mechanics and tradespeople of a humble grade. But then – no debt! And Esther remembered that in her daily prayer for daily bread she had also asked to be enabled to 'owe no man anything.' Was here the answer? And if this were the Lord's way for supplying her necessities, should she refuse to accept it and to be thankful for it?

'It is getting late,' was Esther's conclusion as she turned away. 'We had better get home, Christopher; but I think we will take the house. I must speak to papa; but I think we will take it. You may tell Mrs. Bounder so, with my thanks.'

It cost a little trouble, yet not much, to talk the colonel over. He did not go to see the house, and Esther did not press that he should; he took her report of it, which was an unvarnished one, and submitted himself to what seemed the inevitable. But his daughter knew that her task would have been harder if the colonel's imagination had had the assistance of his eyesight. She was sure that the move must be made, and if it were once effected she was almost sure she could make her father comfortable. To combat his objections beforehand might have been a more difficult matter. Esther found Mrs. Barker's dismay quite enough to deal with. Indeed, the good woman was at first overwhelmed; and sat down, the first time she was taken to the house, in a sort of despair, with a face wan in its anxiety.

'What's the matter, Barker?' Esther said cheerily. 'You and I will soon put this in nice order, with Christopher's help; and then, when we have got it fitted up, we shall be as comfortable as ever; you will see.'

'Oh dear Miss Esther!' the housekeeper ejaculated; 'that ever I should see this day! The like of you and my master!'

'What then?' said Esther, smiling. 'Barker, shall we not take what the

Lord gives us, and be thankful? I am.'

'There ain't no use for Christopher here, as I see,' Mrs. Barker went on.

'No, and he will not be here. Do you see now how happy it is that he has got a home of his own? – which you were disposed to think so unfortunate.'

'I haven't changed my mind, mum,' said the housekeeper. 'How's your horse goin' to be kep', without Christopher?'

'I am not going to keep the horse. Here I shall not need him.'

'The drives you took was very good for you, mum.'

'I will take walks instead. Don't you be troubled. Dear Barker, do you not think our dear Lord knows what is good for us? and do you not think what He chooses is the best? I do.'

Esther's face was very unshadowed, but the housekeeper's, on the contrary, seemed to darken more and more. She stood in the middle of the floor, in one of the small rooms, and surveyed the prospect, alternately within and without the windows.

'Miss Esther, dear,' she began again, as if irrepressibly, 'you're young, and you don't know how queer the world is. There's many folks that won't believe you are what you be, if they see you are livin' in a place like this.'

Did not Esther know that? and was it not one of the whispers in her mind which she found it hardest to combat? She had begun already to touch the world on that side on which Barker declared it was 'queer.' She went, it is true, hardly at all into society; scarce ever left the narrow track of her school routine; yet even there once or twice a chance encounter had obliged her to recognise the fact that in taking the post of a teacher she had stepped off the level of her former associates. It had hurt her a little and disappointed her. Nobody, indeed, had tried to be patronizing; that was nearly impossible towards anybody whose head was set on her shoulders in the manner of Miss Gainsborough's; but she felt the slighting regard in which low-bred people held her on account of her work and position. And so large a portion of the world is deficient in breeding, that to a young person at least the desire of self-assertion comes as a very natural and tolerably strong temptation. Esther had felt it, and trodden it under foot, and yet Mrs. Barker's words made her wince. How could anybody reasonably suppose that a gentleman would choose such a house and such a street to live in?

'Never mind, Barker,' she said cheerfully, after a pause. 'What we have to do is the right thing; and then let all the rest go.'

'Has the colonel seen it, Miss Esther?'

'No, and I do not mean he shall, till we have got it so nice for him that he will feel comfortable.'

The work of moving and getting settled began without delay. Mrs. Barker spent all the afternoons at the new house; and thither came Esther also every day as soon as school was out at three o'clock. The girl worked very hard in these times; for after her long morning in school she gave the rest of the daylight hours to arranging and establishing furniture, hanging draperies, putting up hooks, and the like; and after that she went home to make her father's tea, and give him as much cheery talk as she could command. In the business of moving, however, she found unexpected assistance.

When Christopher told his wife of the decision about the house, the answering remark, made approvingly, was, 'That's a spunky little girl!'

'What do you mean?' said Christopher, not approving such an irreverent expression.

'She's got stuff in her. I like that sort.'

'But that house ain't really a place for her, you know.'

'That's what I'm lookin' at,' returned Mrs. Bounder, with a broad smile at him. 'She ain't scared by no nonsense from duin' what she's got to du. Don't you be scared neither; houses don't make the folks that live in 'em. But what I'm thinkin' of is, they'll want lots o' help to git along with their movin'. Christopher, do you know there's a big box waggin in the barn?'

'I know it.'

'Wall, that'll carry their things fust-rate, ef you kin tackle up your fine-steppin' French emperor there with our Dolly. Will he draw in double harness?'

'Will he! Well, I'll try to persuade him.'

'An' you needn't to let on anything about it. They ain't obleeged to know where the waggin comes from.'

'You're as clever a woman as any I know!' said Mr. Bounder, with a smile of complacency. 'Sally up there can't beat you; and she's a smart woman, too.'

A few minutes were given to the business of the supper table, and then

Mrs. Bounder asked, —

'What are they goin' to du with the French emperor?'

'Buonaparte?' (Christopher called it 'Buonaparty.') 'Well, they'll have to get rid of him somehow. I suppose that job'll come on me.'

'I was thinkin'. Our Dolly's gittin' old' —

'Buonaparty was old some time ago,' returned Christopher, with a sly twinkle of his eyes as he looked at his wife.

'There's work in him yet, ain't there?'

'Lots!'

'Then two old ones would be as good as one young one, and better, for they'd draw the double waggin. What'll they ask for him?'

'It'll be what I can get, I'm thinking.'

'What did you pay for him?'

Christopher named the sum the colonel had given. It was not a high figure; however, he knew, and she knew, that a common draught horse for their garden work could be had for something less. Mrs. Bounder meditated a little, and finally concluded, —

'It won't break us.'

'Save me lots o' trouble,' said Christopher; 'if you don't mind paying so much.'

'If you don't mind, Christopher,' his wife returned, with a grin.

'I've got the money here in the house; you might hand it over to Miss

Esther to-morrow; I'll bet you she'll know what to du with it.'

Christopher nodded. 'She'll be uncommon glad of it, to be sure! There ain't much cash come into her hands for a good bit. And I see sometimes she's been real worrited.'

So Esther's path was smoothed in more ways than one, and even in more ways than I have indicated. For Mrs. Bounder went over and insinuated herself (with some difficulty) so far into Mrs. Barker's good graces that she was allowed to give her help in the multifarious business and cares of the moving. She was capital help. Mrs. Barker soon found that any packing intrusted to her was sure to be safely done; and the little woman's wits were of the first order, always at hand, cool, keen, and comprehensive. She followed, or rather went with the waggon to the house in Major Street; helped unpack, helped put down carpets, helped clear away litter and arrange things in order; and further still, she constantly brought something with her for the bodily refreshment and comfort of Esther and the housekeeper. Her delicious rye bread came, loaf after loaf, sweet butter, eggs, and at last some golden honey. There was no hindering her; and her presence and ministry grew to be a great assistance and pleasure also to Esther. Esther tried to tell her something of this. 'You cannot think how your kindness has helped me,' she said, with a look which told more than her words.

'Don't!' said Mrs. Bounder, when this had happened a second time. 'I was readin' in the Bible the other day – you set me readin' the Bible, Miss Esther – where it says somethin' about a good woman "ministerin' to the saints." I ain't no saint myself, and I guess it'll never be said of me; but I suppose the next thing to bein' a saint is ministerin' to the saints, and I'd like to du that anyhow, ef I only knowed how.'

'You have been kind ever since I knew you,' said Esther. 'I am glad to know our Christopher has got such a good wife.'

Mrs. Bounder laughed a little slyly, as she retorted, 'Ain't there nothin' to be glad of on my side tu?'

'Indeed, yes!' answered Esther. 'Christopher is as true and faithful as it is possible to be; and as to business – But you do not need that I should tell you what Christopher is,' she broke off, laughing.

There was a pleasant look in the little woman's eyes as she stood up for a moment and faced Esther.

'I guess I took him most of all because he be longed to you!' she said.