 Chapter 1 of Esther Read's Namesake. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Esther Read's Namesake by Pansy. Chapter 1. What's in a Name? No, my name is just plain old-fashioned Esther, E-S-T-H-E-R. The E-S-T-E-R was a fad of my respected namesake, was she? No, I'm the namesake, of course. Father tried for it, in fact he struggles at it yet in writing, but it made life too strenuous, and mother and I gave it up. We think it that way, you understand, but for everyday use it simply had to be Esther, E-S-T-H-E-R. The speaker was a grey-eyed, plain-featured, plainly dressed girl with nothing especially to distinguish her from a hundred other girls, though there was a look in the grey eyes that suggested reserved force. She sat on the upper step of a side porch, and on either side of her were girls of somewhere near her own age. They were in street attire, and carried the one a bag and the other a strap, laden with books. The unmistakable student air breathed all about them. They were, in fact, college girls, and Saturday though it was, had just come from some class function. Esther had reached her stopping place, and the others had lingered for a friendly visit such as they occasionally of a Saturday treated themselves too. They were continuing a discussion that had been suggested by the name of one of the girls who had left them at the last corner. People ought to wait for their names until they have reached years of discretion, and then be allowed to name themselves. There would at least be a chance that they would be better pleased with the choice than they are now. Who ever saw a girl that liked her own name? Besides, they are so liable to be misnomers. Do you think, for instance, that I could have been idiot enough to name myself Blanche if I had been given the opportunity? At this word her companions turned and deliberately surveyed the dark-haired, dark-eyed, unusually dark-skinned speaker, then laughed carelessly. I am very well satisfied with my name, said the fair-haired girl on Esther's left. Oh, that's merely because you are taken with the sound of it, the brunette answered quickly. Faith Farnham pleases your taste for alliteration, but it doesn't fit you a bit better than mine does me. Everybody knows that you are a born skeptic. I'm not absolutely certain that you believe in anything. Oh, yes I do. I believe in your frankness for one thing, and in Professor Sartwell's sarcasm and, well, several other things. I ought never to have been named Esther, I'm sure of that, said the central figure in gloomy tones. I have told Father so scores of times. It is a continual disappointment to him to have me dropping so far below his ideals and his idol. Was it your father's sister you were named for, Essie? Oh, no, no indeed. It was a young woman whom my father knew when he was a little boy, the grown-up sister of his boyfriend, and she died when he was still a little boy. But she must have been a very wonderful person, for she left her impress on my father to a degree that is simply astonishing. Father never saw her, yet she knows volumes about her. She has to, you see, because Father has talked of her so much. I am honestly sorry for him. It is a terrible pity that he hasn't other children. He lavished all his hopes of rearing a second Esther Reid upon poor me, who was born for the purpose of disappointing him. You may laugh, girls, but you have no conception of what a life it is, this being expected to reproduce a character that is as unlike yours as it is possible for two creatures of the same species to be. It has simply worn me out, the working at it, you know, without making a single inch of progress. That is one reason why they sent me away out here to school. Her companions laughed. They were used to laughing at Esther Randall's remarks. Even common places had a way of sounding amusing when she gave them voice. But the girl they called Blanche spoke seriously enough in a moment more. She must have been a wonderful woman, as you say, to have made so strong an impression on a mere boy. Didn't you say he was young when she died? Only about thirteen, and he had known her but a few months, yet he has always said that knowing her changed his entire life. I owe her a grudge, by the way. I don't believe that my father would have ever been a home missionary with a starving salary if it had not been for her. Faith Farnham laughed again, but Blanche had still a faraway serious look in her eyes. It must be a lovely thing, she said wistfully, to be able to live so that a quarter of a century after you are gone, someone will be feeling the impress of your life for good. I should like to live such a life as that. Tell us more about her. How was it that she happened to be so wonderful? How should I know? She died ages before I was born, of course. She was an invalid when father knew her. She had a little brother, Alfred, and he and father were inseparable, so father had an opportunity to see a good deal of the sister. She was the sort of sister who had a great deal to do with her little brother and his friends. Father must have been an impressionable boy, and she wove a spell about him that lasts. That's all. But that is a great deal, persisted Blanche. Judging from what you say of your father, his life seems to be well worth living. Of course it is. My father is one of the few men who ought to be allowed to live forever, because this world needs him. Well, you say yourself that you do not believe he would have been a missionary but for this girl who died when he was a little boy. I think that is magnificent. As to the missionary part, said Esther with a toss of her head that meant defiance, I could have found it in my heart to forgive him if he had chosen some other sphere. I think of several that would have suited me quite as well. There, for instance, is his friend Alfred, own brother to the Paragon, who is a merchant prince in New York at this minute. I think my father could have adorned that position, and I know I could have managed my part. Faith Farnham swung her bag of books impatiently. Don't run off the track, so you will not get to the root of the matter. How did that woman or girl do it? That is what Blanche wants to know. She burns to influence a life, and you won't show her how to accomplish it. How am I supposed to know? She was a Christian girl, of course. Yes, of course, said Blanche, still speaking thoughtfully, but I know scores of Christians have known them all my life, and so have you. And yet Faith Farnham's significant laugh interrupted, and she spoke not ill-naturedly but with an air of amusement. You are even one yourself, aren't you, Essie? Esther Randall flushed to her forehead. It isn't necessary to sneer, she said coldly. There are genuine Christians in the world, even though you have been so unfortunate as not to meet any of them. If you knew my father and mother, you would understand what I mean. My blessed child, do you imagine for a moment that I was hinting at anything disparaging to that beloved father and mother? I wouldn't be so horrid, even if I thought it, which of course I don't. I know there are admirable people in the world, and I shouldn't be surprised if I found more of them than you do. I'm no pessimist. But I didn't mean to be personal, dear, though I own that my words sounded so. I was merely thinking of a multitude of people whom I know all labeled Christians and trying to decide whether I knew one whose profession of that particular faith was making an impression on either himself or others. Own nonsense, Faith. I know a good many Christians whose lives match their professions fairly well, and so do you. Only you don't understand the subject well enough to know what a Christian really professes. It was Blanche Halstead who spoke with a note of reproof in her voice that had been awakened by Esther's glowing cheeks. Do you think so? said Faith carelessly. Don't be too sure of that, my child. Perhaps I read my Bible more than you imagine. She had risen as she spoke, gathering her bag of books with a firm hand. I must get home, she said. We have a fearful lesson for our next eleven o'clock hour. Professor Ackers is a Christian without a conscience when it comes to assigning lessons for Monday. How can I be expected to go to church on Sunday and look after my soul with fifty pages of notes staring me in the face to be absorbed for Monday? Come on, Blanche, my fair one, if we stay here any longer we shall quarrel. You and Esther are both waxing excited over nothing. It is all on account of that exacting name. I would give over trying to live up to it if I were you, my dear, it makes life too strenuous. Esther tried to make her laugh sound natural and cordial. She was already ashamed of her quick temper and had no wish to quarrel with those who were her only intimate friends. I am afraid the name does not trouble me much in these days, she said. I gave over any attempt to live up to it before I came here. I couldn't expect to do anything with it among such a set, you know. There, now we are even and can begin again. Shall I see you both tomorrow at Bible class? Not this child, said Faith Farnam cheerily. Didn't I remind you of the fifty pages? No time for obsolete literature tomorrow. Blanche will go, I presume, that is her one concession to the Sabbath of her childhood. Faith, you are simply horrid tonight, said Blanche, in utmost good nature. I told you you ought to have been named something else. Why, Esther, I don't believe I can be there tomorrow. I must be out late tonight, you know, and the Bible class meets at such an unearthly hour. Still, I'll see. It is just possible that I may get around. Reservoir, my dear, don't try to be too strenuous tomorrow, it doesn't pay. They went down the avenue chatting gaily. They never quarreled those two, partly perhaps, because they had acquired the habit of being perfectly frank and giving each other credit for meaning just what she said, never more or less. Esther Randall looked after them with a half-wistful air. Intimate friends, though they were, there were sharp contrasts between them. The two girls represented to Esther the pleasant, comfortable world, a world in which people consulted their tastes and inclinations with reasonable assurance that their pocketbooks would be equal to the demands made upon them. And to Esther, who had spent all her life under the dominion of a straightened purse, this state of things meant much, meant more perhaps than it should. Her earliest recollections connected with her mother represented a sweet, serious face and a gentle voice that was saying, Esther, dear, mother cannot afford to buy it for you. I haven't as much money as Eva's mother has. You must not expect the same kind of playthings. Then later came the attempt to explain. You know, dear, that father, when he decided to become a home missionary, knew that he must sacrifice many things that he would like to do, and he did it very cheerfully, gladly indeed, for the sake of the cause. But one of the hardest things for him has always been the sacrifice of what he would like to do for us, for his little daughter. We must help him all we can, dear, by being brave and satisfied. Glad, you know, to join him in sacrifice as well as in work. It was high ground for a young girl who wanted bright ribbons and gay dresses, and later books and pictures and trips such as others had. She struggled with her unrest and discontent and did not grumble much, but she had never worn the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit and did not even appreciate its value. Her audible grumblings were chiefly for her father and mother. Why ought they to do all the sacrificing? The work belonged to the whole church, and other people, church members, seemed to have all the nice things they wanted. At least they didn't save for missions. Some of her questions were hard to answer satisfactorily. Perhaps her straightened life was largely to blame for the fact that the girl, as she grew to young womanhood, was in danger of attaching undue importance to money, or rather to the secondary matters for which it stood, luxury and leisure, and opportunity to cultivate one's own tastes and desires. She was not consciously selfish. She believed that she thought first and most of her mother and father, and it was true that no young woman ever set her parents on a higher pedestal or bowed lower before them in reverence than did Esther read Randall. She loved, nay, she idolized her missionary father with a passionate fervor that grew with her growth. As for her mother, the chivalrous devotion which she had from her babyhood watched her father give his wife had been repeated in the child. When she longed exceedingly for the opportunity of other girls, it was always that she might fit herself to accomplish great things in the world, and so be able to give her father and mother what they ought to have. In truth, a rarely good girl was Esther Randall. The hearts of father and mother could safely trust in her, and yet the girl would have been shocked and grieved almost beyond endurance. Could she have known that some of their saddest hours were for her? Mr. Randall had by no means gone blindfolded into the life of toil and privation incident to the work of a home missionary on a western frontier. Instead he had chosen the work with eyes wide open to its limitations and sacrifices. His choice had been made when he was a mere boy. He remembered vividly the day and the hour when he had said, I will do it for her. He was in his fourteenth year, and it was a stormy winter evening outside, but up in Esther Reed's pretty room all was bright and cheerful. He had gone over, as he often did, to spend the evening with his friend, Alfred Reed. And when their lessons were done, Esther sent for them both, as she often did, to pop corn or roast apples on the glowing coals of her hearth and to watch the play of the lights and shadows and tell stories and have good times. The Reverend Spencer Randall sometimes leaned back in his stout wooden chair, with his gay patchwork quilt wrapped about his limbs in order to supplement the warmth of the feeble fire in his own hearth, and went over in memory that particular evening in Esther Reed's room. She was lying on her couch, as she nearly always was, when they visited her. She was wearing a bright red wrapper that was bound at throat and wrists with something soft and white. His girl Esther had won nearly like it as her mother could fashion, and when she wore it he called her the full name, Esther Reed. End of Chapter 1. Recording by Tricia G. Chapter 2 of Esther Reed's Namesake. This LibriBox recording is in the public domain. Esther Reed's Namesake by Pansy. Chapter 2. Sacrifice He remembered every detail of that eventful evening. The corn had been popped and most of it eaten, and it was nearly time for him to race around the square to his own home when Alfred was directed to go for his sister Sadie, who was at the library. Come on, Spencer, he had said. You may as well go with me, since you have got to go out in the rain anyhow." And then Esther had spoken. No, Spencer will stay and take care of me, dear, while you are gone. It will be time for my drops before you can get back, and I know he is willing to wait and give them to me. The missionary remembered how his face had flushed with pleasure over the thought that she treated him like a brother and trusted him for service. Alfred had gone away whistling cheerily, and he had stayed and counted the drops with exceeding care, and measured just the right amount of water, and as she lay back among the pillows after taking them, she had laid a soft white hand on his arm and said, Sit down here a minute, Spencer. I like to be where I can look at your strong young face and think of what you will do by and by. I want you to do some of my work, my boy. I don't know just how or where. That part doesn't matter. I wanted to go among people who did not know God very well and help them to get acquainted with him. Really acquainted, I mean, not simply members of the church as I was for years without knowing why or caring much about it. I believe that the very lonesomest people there are in this world are those who think that they know Jesus Christ and have only abowing acquaintance with him. This had seemed strange talk to the boy who had been reverently trained in his home. It sounded almost improper, he thought, to talk of abowing acquaintance with Jesus Christ. Only, of course, Esther Reid would never do anything that was improper. She had smiled at his wondering look as she said, You will never be that sort of Christian, my boy. I am sure of it. I wonder if you would be willing to promise something. No, on second thought, I will not ask you to promise. But you may remember that I want you to spend your life in trying to help people to know the Lord Jesus in the true sense. The missionary remembered how his heart beat and how strangely he felt as he tried to stammer out that he did not know how to help anybody. But she had only smiled again, a wonderfully bright, glad smile as she said, You will learn how, my boy, he will teach you. I have his promise that he will direct both you and Alfred. But you will each work in your own way, and I foresee that you can do some things for Christ that Alfred cannot. She had not said a great deal more. The boy went home a few minutes afterward as she advised him to do without waiting for Alfred's return. But she had made an impression that lasted. He could seem to feel again the thrills of determination that surged through him as he trudged home in the darkness and rain. He made himself a solemn promise that he would do work in the world which should be worthy of Esther Reid's trust in him. He did not know what kind of work, he made no plans, and had no thought at the time that the resolves of that night would ever lead him to far western regions as a home missionary. He only knew that he meant to hold himself ready for his call. All this he had done. All through the years of boyhood, young manhood and middle age, Spencer Randall had carried with him the impulse of that last talk with the sister of the boyfriend. Not that he had imagined that it would be the last talk. No one, not even Esther Reid herself, had realized that her opportunities were so swiftly reaching their end. But it was not quite a week afterward that Spencer stood beside the casket and read through blinding tears that, big boy though he called himself, he made no attempt to hide, the simple inscription on the plate. Esther Reid aged nineteen. He had named his only child Esther Reid and never was a child the subject of more earnest prayer and eager hope. Both mother and father had earnestly desired that the ideal Esther Reid whom they had fashioned, the one out of memories and the other from the vivid impressions of her husband, should be reproduced in their daughter. Yet both were obliged to realize the sharp contrasts between the ideal and the real. She is a dear girl, would the father say, looking fondly after his Esther as she skipped away, intent on some scheme which for the time being absorbed all her energies. A dear girl, but the words nearly always ended in a sigh. Still very few of Esther Randall's acquaintances would have understood her father's sigh. The girl was universally admired as well as liked. The little struggling church, situated in a western town that had disappointed the expectations of its founders in almost every respect, had good reasons for admiring the daughter of the faithful home missionary who served them. That vigorous energetic daughter who could not only trim the easily irritated church lamps so that they would not smoke and would emit a reasonable amount of light, but who could play the wheezy little organ in such a manner as to disguise the defects of the keys that were out of tune and cover the absence of the keys that wouldn't go. She could also start the tunes in prayer meeting where they had no organ and carry the soprano in church and help the tenor on occasion over hard places. A girl of versatile gifts was Esther Reed Randall. There were those in the church who believed that she could preach, had necessity compelled, and give them as good a sermon as they cared to hear. In short, the church in the village generally believed in the missionary's daughter. It is sad to have to admit that it was in her own home that Esther's deficiencies were most distinctly felt. Not that this is mentioned as something unusual. On the contrary, the fact that the home is the crucial test of character is so well understood that it has become an axiom. Yet the pity of it must always press itself upon our attention, that the place we love the most and the place where we are the most needed of any spot on earth should be the scene of our heaviest failures. Poor Esther Reed, who knew nothing of her namesake's early trials and failures, bemoaned in metaphorical sackcloth and ashes her innumerable falls from the pedestal of her resolutions. Poor father, she moaned in the solitude of her own room after one of her descents, to have such an ideal and then such a dismal reality. It is ever so much worse than if he had expected only an ordinary being in the first place. I'm sure I don't know how he can endure the sight of me. If he were not the best father in the whole world he would hate me and I shouldn't blame him either. She was very severe upon herself, which was perhaps not strange, since it was only too evident that in the direction where there was most need of improvement the almost daily record was failure. Her thorn in the flesh, or as she had once expressed it, her whole thornbush, was Aunt Sarah, her mother's oldest sister, who had made her home with them since Esther's early childhood. Poor Aunt Sarah was the manner in which even her sister spoke oftenest of her, and without doubt Aunt Sarah was poor in the truest sense of that word. Her life, even in girlhood, had been such that the word failure seemed the best one to describe it. She had gone early from home to be the spoiled darling of a grandmother who had had spasms of ordering her about with unreasoning and imperious willfulness, but for the most part had been governed herself by the girl's lightest whim. Before reaching her eighteenth year the girl had married against the earnest protestations of her parents and the command of her grandmother. A few stormy years of married life, during which she suffered enough at the hands of an intemperate and unprincipled man to subdue some natures, and then he was accidentally killed in a drunken quarrel. The young widow went back to her childhood home as undisciplined by her life of trial as she had been when she went away from it a young girl. It was when her youngest sister had been for five or six years the wife of a home missionary that financial trouble came to the old home. The father, a wealthy man who had lavished every luxury that money could buy upon his wife and children, was suddenly stricken with disease at a time when conditions in the business world were such that every atom of strength, which his knowledge of business and his singularly well-balanced mind could have offered, was needed to tide them over a crisis, and he could not even be asked any questions. One great source of comfort to the stricken family lay in the fact that father went home to the house not made with hands without ever having heard of financial troubles. They were heavy enough. Everybody who knew him was ready to affirm that had Mr. Bradford lived he could have undoubtedly tided them through the breakers, but he did not live and the storm swept everything available. Out of the wreck were secured only a few hundreds, barely enough to keep the widow and her one unmarried daughter from want until they could look about them and contrive some way of earning a living. And the blow fell heavily also on home mission ground. Mr. Bradford had delighted in making a bower of beauty of that little western cottage where his youngest darling lived. To the plain people by whom it was surrounded, its furnishings seemed wildly extravagant, and they stood in awe before its choice pictures and its wealth of books. Mr. Bradford had smiled to himself over the talk he had with the earnest young missionary who came to ask him for his daughter. The young man had struggled to be very plain spoken so that the rich man might understand fully the life of privation and toil that he had been bold enough to ask his daughter to share. There must be no feeling afterward that the father had been deceived in the conditions. It is a growing town, said Mr. Randall, bound to grow, I think. The railroad which is now partially built and is being surveyed directly through the village will connect us with the great markets, and there is no better point at which to build up a city than just that one. Property is a third higher this fall all about there than it was in the spring, and is steadily on the increase, so I think we may safely predict that in less than two years the church which I am to serve will become self-supporting. But—and here the earnest face had flushed a little, and for an instant he dropped his eyes, then raised them again and spoke firmly—I think I ought to tell you, sir, that Helen and I have talked all this over and understand each other. We do not want to boom with the town. We have cast in our lot as home missionaries—at least I mean, and his face grew redder—that such is my intention, and Helen is in sympathy with it. We want to be pioneers in every sense of the word. It is my, our desire, as soon as a church that we are serving becomes self-supporting, to move on to a harder field and struggle up with the people to the self-supporting stage. This is different in some respects from what many home missionaries plan, but it seems to me to be what has been given me to do, and I have consecrated my life to just such service. At first I had no thought, no hope I may say, of finding a wife who would sacrifice herself in that way, and I meant to, but your daughter, sir, and then Mr. Randall felt rather than saw the twinkle in the prosperous businessman's eyes and stopped and laughed. Mr. Bradford was a good as well as a rich man. He had gone down into the depths of pain over the marriage of his oldest daughter, but he believed in the young man who had sought the heart of his youngest. Also he believed in missions. So you have made up your mind to sacrifice yourself, he said cheerfully, and my Helen has persuaded you that such is also her state of mind, has she? I am not surprised. The child has been sacrificing herself to something or somebody ever since she could walk, and she has high ideals. She will meet you more than half way every time, but I believe in your ideals and in your theories so far as I understand them. I shall offer no obstacles large enough to hinder the kind of sacrifice which you propose. He spoke that word sacrifice with an easy smile. He had no doubt but that they would contrive to make some sacrifices to bury themselves in their youth and strength in that growing West would be a sort of sacrifice to people of cultured tastes. But such trials as money could avert, he himself would take care should never touch his darling's life. He had been for years an exceedingly liberal giver to home missions. When the home missionaries were his youngest darling and the husband of her choice, what would he not do for them? He had been true to his intentions during those first years. In almost every letter that the prosperous businessman found time to write to his daughter, a generous check made up for the brevity of the epistle, and the home missionary and his wife, in addition to their regular work in the parish, had had the rare privilege of scattering material comforts with lavish hand in the homes of the poor and sick. When suddenly, out of a clear sky, the bolt of sorrow and misfortune fell, there were many who could honestly mourn with the missionaries. They, too, had lost a friend who, although he had perhaps never heard their names, had contributed steadily to their needs. It was when their bereavement and almost bewilderment over the changed state of things was fresh upon them that Helen Randall thought of and planned another quiet sacrifice. It was days before she mentioned it to her husband, not indeed until she had the entire plan mentally arranged, down to the minute particulars, ready for his approval or disapproval. Then she introduced it quietly enough. They were lingering at the breakfast table, their little girl Esther having been excused to run out and play. Spencer, said Mrs. Randall, as she gave him a plump peach he had paired for him, do you think there is any way in which we could manage it to have Sarah come out to us for a long visit? She could have cried over his look of utter astonishment, but instead she laughed. Men were so stupid. End of Chapter 2, Recording by Tricia G. Chapter 3 of Esther Read's Namesake. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Esther Read's Namesake by Pansy. Chapter 3. Thorns. Why, my dear, he said, I thought it would be Mary that you would want. I have thought about it a good deal and wondered if there was any way to plan it. Mary, she repeated the name in astonishment, men were certainly bewildering. Why, Spencer, I wouldn't have Mary leave mother for the world and there is no need for her to come. In fact, mother simply could not live without her. But Sarah is different. It is for mothers and Mary's sake, not mine, that I want Sarah to come. Chiefly, I mean. Father used to have a great deal of influence over poor Sarah. We noticed that she was much better able to control her nerves when he was at home. But she always found it hard to be patient with Mary. She is so many years the younger, you know. And poor Sarah could never seem to realize that she was anything but a little girl to be directed and governed. Now that father is gone, I can think just what friction there is. Oh, Spencer, it is hard to put into words, but don't you understand? I begin to, said the missionary, with a sympathetic smile, although I find it difficult to think of friction in connection with your sister Mary. But it was slowly donning upon him that his wife wanted her sister Sarah to come out to them for the sake of the mother and sister in the East, and that she did not want to put such a statement boldly even to him. The suggestion appalled him at first. It was true, as he had told his wife, that he had been thinking about a visit from Mary, but he had got no farther than an earnest wish that the way might somehow be opened for her to come to them for a little while. To boldly undertake to plan away for any of them looked much like attempting the impossible, but determined people, especially if they are also self-sacrificing people, often succeed in accomplishing the almost impossible. In the course of time, at the expense of certain comforts and indeed almost necessities about which the friends in the East would never hear, the eldest sister Sarah came out to them ostensibly for a visit, though even then the missionary and his wife looked steadily at the thought that they might never be able to plan for her return. Not so the guest. She came as one who had condescended and told certain of the neighbors in the early weeks of her visit that she presumed she would not stay long. She had been sorry for her sister's loneliness and so had consented to the long and tedious journey, but she had always hated the West and been vexed with her sister for allowing her husband to bury himself there. With regard to money matters Aunt Sarah was as ignorant as a child. She only knew that in the years of her girlhood whatever she wanted could be had for the asking, and if she went downtown without sufficient money in her purse, she had only to mention her father's name to find merchants and milleners delighted to accommodate her. During the brief stormy period of her married life, her needs so far as understood had been supplied from the same source as when she was a girl, and the girl widow had gone back to her childhood home expecting to be taken care of as she had always been. When the financial crash came that swept away her father's fortune, she understood the reasons for it less than the average girl of twelve would have done and was sure of what one thing, that somebody was to blame for all the discomforts that rolled in upon her. They ought to be ashamed of themselves, was the indignant phrase often on her lips, the they being that vague impersonal force that illogical people are always blaming or expecting to perform. In this case the use of it was so unreasonable as to leave no room for argument. It even called a one smile to the haggard face of the much younger, much wiser sister Mary, who knew that she was now her mother's and oldest sister's main dependents. When that hearty invitation came for Sarah to go west for a visit of indefinite length, accompanied by a check sufficient to meet her traveling expenses, only Mary knew the magnitude of the burden thus suddenly lifted from her shoulders. The girl had been true to the last pledge she had made to her father and shielded her mother even from the knowledge of friction as much as possible. Aunt Sarah had been willing, even eager, to make the journey. Anything being better, she told her younger sister bitterly, than to live as beggars among the people who had known them all their lives as superiors. If we have got to live a life of slow starvation, it is much better to do it where we are not known and among people who couldn't appreciate any other style of living. If Spencer had been half a man, he would have sent for you and mother at the same time. To her personal friends she explained that poor Helen needed her. She had been buried alive out there so many years that she felt as though she must have one of them with her, and of course she was the one to sacrifice her own interests and goal. If the missionary and his wife had fallen unconsciously into the habit of always saying poor Sarah, they were only returning the phrase that had been employed for them. The oldest sister had persistently said poor Helen ever since the girl had married a home missionary instead of the young man with brilliant prospects who had struggled bravely to win her to a different decision. She had been loud in her criticism of both her father and mother in permitting such a sacrifice, and she talked volubly of the privations to which she must accustom herself in going out to share poor Helen's home. Yet it is certain that she had understood little about them. The first sight of the homely frame house, set in the midst of what seemed to her a vast sandy desert, struck something like terror to her soul. Nor were the scant furnishings and the general air of what she called shabbiness that characterized the living rooms calculated to reassure her. There had, of course, been no attempt to deceive her, but the letter's home, since the father's death, had been reticent and cheerful from principle. Besides, they were so busy with their work and so happy in it that many of what the undisciplined guests named trials and privations had touched them lightly or been overlooked altogether. Still, they had been careful to let the coming guest know to a penny the income on which the home missionary had to depend, believing that people who could reason would have no difficulty in reaching their own conclusions. But Aunt Sarah had never reasoned. She remembered vividly that father seemed to be always sending a box or a package or a check to Helen, yet she could not be made to understand what a difference the cessation of these gifts had made in the missionary's home. During the earlier months of her visit, her questions were often like instruments of torture. Conversations not unlike the following were frequent. Helen, what has become of that elegant carpet father sent you? I remember telling him that it was very foolish to buy a Wilton velvet carpet to send away out here, but he said he wanted one that would do for your grandchildren. Why, that was burned in our big fire. Don't you remember my writing all about it? How Spencer burnt his hands trying to save that carpet and some other things? That dreadful fire, think of your splendid piano going with the rest and those elegant curtains far too elegant for the room. I said so at the time. Father was really ridiculous in his ideas about some things. And now they are all gone. It does seem as though they could have saved something that was worth saving if they had really tried. That impersonal they, yet it hurt Helen Randall. She felt sure that no more heroic effort had ever been made than her husband and the few friends who were near enough to reach them in time had made to save their home. And they had saved many things, the minister's precious books in goodly numbers. Of course no carpets or curtains could compete with these, but Aunt Sarah did not so understand it. In the same breath with which she sighed and said, it does seem as though they could have saved a few things if they had tried, she added in tone significant. Rose and Rose of great dull books lugged out and your piano and lovely chairs that Father sent you and the curtains and portiers all left here to burn. Isn't that just like men? But the most bewildering problem in the missionary home was the daughter Esther. Aunt Sarah had lived a life that was singularly out of touch with childhood or young girlhood. There had been no child of her own to soften and sweeten her nature and she seemed to have forgotten that she herself was ever a child or at least she had forgotten what manner of child she was. As for Esther, she was by no means a perfect child and she undoubtedly rasped the nerves of her Aunt Sarah in a thousand ways that she did not understand as well as in some that she did. From the very first there had been a sort of antagonism between the two. Why don't you make that child's dresses longer was the first note of criticism. She looks like a fright with her bobbed-off skirts and her long-length legs. Then before the mother could make her gentle explanation Esther's gray eyes would flash and her tone would express words unsaid as she answered. My mother likes my dresses this way best and she knows. Oh she does saw Spock's. Who asked you anything about it? What a wild looking creature you are. I should think you would be afraid of being mistaken for a squaw with your straight hair dangling about your face and your skin as brown as a butternut. If you would wear your son bonnet when you raced around the country like a colt you wouldn't be quite so black at least. All this was as gall and wormwood to Esther who hated her straight hair and her tawny skin fully as much as she did her two short dresses. Not for the world would she have told Aunt Sarah that her dresses were short because she had outgrown them and that she was trying to be a brave girl and wear them and other things without complaint so as not to worry father. If she could have made a confidant of her aunt and accepted her as one of them it would doubtless have been better for both. But with the unerring instinct of childhood the girl had understood that her aunt had no real interest in her and no sympathy with her childish plans and endeavors. Nor had the friction between them thus early exhibited lessened as the years passed. The young girl made in spasms at least what she considered superhuman efforts itself control. But there were times when she believed it impossible to keep back the keen sarcasms that flashed through her mind as naturally as a fire of kindling burns when a match is set to it. At thirteen the chief relic of her childhood was a great doll of rare mechanism and beauty that had been the gift of her grandfather in his most prosperous days and that was a rock of offense to her aunt Sarah. A great girl like you lugging a doll around she would sneer as Esther with her treasure in her arms was caught trying to make her escape to a certain tree with widespreading branches that she considered her hiding place. I wonder what your cousin Lucia would say if she could see you. She is a whole year younger than you and she packed away her dolls long ago. Grandfather sent me this doll, would Esther reply, throwing all the fierceness into her tones that she longed to put into words and knew that she must not. Well, what if he did? He sent you a silver rattle once. Why don't you go shaking that through the house because it was a present from your grandfather. For that matter about everything you have came from him, but if he were alive I can assure you he wouldn't feel flattered to hear of your going about with a doll in your arms. A girl almost as tall as her mother. Scenes like these often repeated kept the young girl's blood at the boiling point and it is easy to guess what would have happened had there not always been the gentle mother to speak softly with a tender hand laid on the child's arm. Never mind, dear, Aunt Sarah isn't used to children, remember? Slip away with your doll and enjoy her. Sometimes Esther wondered, with a kind of terror, just what she would do if mother were not there. But since she was, the quick-tempered child generally managed to keep within the limits of a muttered, I wonder what she is used to as she sped away. But there were times when her indignation burst all bounds and then would occur one of those scenes which invariably afterward caused a deep descent into the valley of humiliation. It was after her doll-playing days were really over that the girl's severest tests came. Aunt Sarah, who besides having no sympathy with young people, had no practical knowledge as to their training, chose to accuse poor Esther of being too fond of her boy classmates in the public school. I am sure I don't understand what your mother can be thinking about, she would begin the moment Esther appeared in sight. You are forever with the boys. I don't believe you have any girlfriends. Oh indeed I have, Aunt Sarah, hosts of them. Then why in the name of decency are you never seen with them? I have watched you coming home morning and afternoon for three days in succession, and there has been a boy on each side of you every time and not a girl in sight. Oh you don't mean that, Aunt Sarah, because you said you watched me and I am a girl, you know, but I can explain the reason for that horrible state of things. Dreadful as it may be, it is a fact that not a single girl in our grade lives down this way. I have to part from them all at the corner, and there are two of those disreputable creatures known as boys who happen to live one on the first corner below us and the other a few steps farther. And instead of having the decency to wait until I get home or at the very least to cross the road and walk home on the other side, they will persist in coming right along with me. It is terrible, but it makes everything plain, doesn't it? Now Miss Malapert, would Aunt Sarah respond, you are fairly started, aren't you? Of course you can find something to be saucy about. I never knew such a girl. Not the least thing can I say without having a piece of your tongue. I suppose you think you are smart, but if you would like my opinion in plain English, I think you are the most disagreeable girl I ever met. I should think you would be ashamed of yourself, talking to your own aunt in that way, just because she wants you to grow up a modest, respectable girl, instead of a hoidon who is always running after the boys. End of Chapter 3, Recording by Tricia G Chapter 4 Joram Pratt It was that phrase running after the boys, which made Esther's face fling, and almost before she knew it the angry protest would flow from her lips. I don't run after the boys, Aunt Sarah, and you know I don't. Will Watson and Fred Mitchell are both in my class, and they are the only scholars in our grade who live out this way. When they happen to turn the corner at the same time I do, of course we walk along together. Why shouldn't we? They are nice boys, and if father and mother don't object to our walking down the street together, I don't see why you should. But by that time Aunt Sarah's nerves would have got quite beyond her control, and her high-keyed voice would penetrate to the minister's study. Yes, there is some more of your impudence. That is just the same as telling me that it is none of my business what you do. It is a pity your father couldn't hear you when you get on your high heels and talk saucy to me. Much as he humors and spoils you, he is too thoroughly a gentleman to allow that. And your mother too, my lady, what do you suppose she will say when I tell her you have as good as told me to mind my own business? Then would come a distinct, sorrowful voice from the little study. Daughter, even while Esther, angry, ashamed, and penitent all at once, would attempt an explanation. I didn't say that, Aunt Sarah, and you must know that I couldn't mean any such thing. What I meant was, oh dear, the words would be stopped by a rush of tears, and a hurried exit from the room, her aunt's last words resounding in her ears. Oh yes, you meant perfection, of course. You always do. Or you would like your father to think so. If Aunt Sarah could have heard the words poured into that father's ears two minutes afterward, it might or might not have modified her opinion of Esther. Oh Father, I've been talking again, making Aunt Sarah angry and saying horrid things. She says I have, but I didn't mean to be horrid, Father, and I didn't say what she thinks I did. But she says I run after the boys, and I can't, oh Father, and then a perfect torrent of tears and sobs would drown further words. If I didn't have a good deal of patient waiting, and some soothing and much questioning, Mr. Randall would arrive at very nearly the truth. By that time there would be no need to chide, for Esther would be in the depths of the valley of humiliation, and with bitter self-reproaches would sob out her shame and disappointment. She had meant to be so careful, and never annoy Aunt Sarah again. She had promised mother, and she had promised herself that, no matter what was said to her, she would not answer back, and she would be gentle and patient. And now it was all over, and there was no use in her ever trying again. It would end in the Fathers having to turn comforter, but he was a wise comforter, never shutting his eyes for a moment to the fault on Esther's side, while he, with equal frankness, admitted that she was sorely tried. Esther was sure to go from the study in a genuinely humble mood, ready, even anxious, to beg Aunt Sarah's pardon, although this function had its trials. Of course, would Aunt Sarah say with dignity, I'll forgive you. I hope I know my duty, but I should think you would grow tired of asking forgiveness. You know you will flame out at me again at the first opportunity. I don't see that you gain a particle in the matter of controlling your temper. But the trials of the girl of fifteen were as nothing compared with those of the young woman of eighteen. It was about that time that Aunt Sarah's views concerning Esther's friendship with the boys seemed to have undergone a change. At least she chose out one boy and elected him to become Esther's special property. He was a good-natured, ignorant, awkward country boy, or young man as he called himself, and as Aunt Sarah was careful to call him. To Esther's infinite annoyance and embarrassment, young Joram Pratt sympathized most heartily with Aunt Sarah's views and made strenuous efforts to establish the sort of intimacy between Esther and himself which would be recognized in the parlance of his circle of friends as keeping company. He lavished whole boxes of peppermint drops and other sweets upon her and, discovering that she loved flowers, brought her bouquets fearfully and wonderfully made in which all the colors of the rainbow met and quarreled. In vain did Esther protest and beg her mother in her absence to protect her from these gifts which Aunt Sarah, always on the alert, was sure to receive and accept with smiling face. The busy mother would hurry to the door, or more often the gate, only in time to get a glimpse of Joram's broad, good-natured face in the near distance and to hear Aunt Sarah's voice calling after him. I'll tell her all about it, Joram. She'll be sure to like them. She's real fond of tulips. Mother, would Esther say, her face aflame. What am I to do? It is disgraceful. He thinks I am encouraging him, and he talks about me at the store in the post office. He calls me his best girl. Mother, I simply cannot endure this thing any longer. The distressed mother made an effort to comfort her. Dear child, I know it is very trying, but your aunt doesn't mean to be annoying, and there will not be any real harm done. Joram is not so foolish as to construe the kindness she shows him as coming from you. Of course he understands that we are all his good friends and that he is on precisely the same footing as the other young people of the church. He doesn't dream of anything more than that, I am sure. I wish you wouldn't distress yourself by imagining that he does. But Aunt Sarah meant much more than that and was outspoken, at least to Esther. You needn't turn up your nose at Joram Pratt, my lady. There are plenty of worse chances than that in the world. He will have a well-stocked farm of his own one of these days and will know how to manage it. And he is honest and good-natured and ready to get down on the floor and let you walk over him if you like. I don't know what more you want or at least expect. I should think you would be grateful to him for choosing you out of all the crowd of girls there are here. There isn't a young man in the neighborhood with better prospects than Joram Pratt has. Young man would burst from Esther's angry lips. He is nothing but an ignorant, awkward, red-haired boy. But Aunt Sarah was ready for her. He is almost twenty-one and has settled down to steady work like the sensible fellow that he is. I don't see that he is any more ignorant than the rest of the people out here. If it comes to that, what are you but an ignorant, brown-haired westerner? Here you are a way out at the end of civilization, one may say, and not the slightest prospect of ever getting anywhere else. It isn't as though you had been brought up in the sphere to which your mother once belonged. You may as well make up your mind to take what chance you can get. If you turn scourfully away from a respectable, well-to-do young man like Joram Pratt, merely because he doesn't match some of your silly, sentimental ideas, mark my words you will live to regret it. Remember, your father is only a home missionary, poor as a church mouse. It is hard work now for him to feed and clothe you, and there isn't the slightest hope of his ever having a better salary. And there is your mother, who was brought up in luxury without having to lift a finger unless she chose, slaving her life away. If their daughter doesn't plan for them, I wonder who will. If you were the kind of girl you ought to be, you would think of the comforts you could bring to this house, simply by marrying Joram Pratt, to say nothing of the comfort it would be to your father to have you well provided for and off his hands. Joram is just as generous as he can be. You can tell that by the way he wastes fruits and candies on you. I have no manner of doubt but that he would do for your folks about what you wanted him to. You prayed a good deal about education, but Joram has enough to look after his taxes all right and his bank account, and I'm sure you haven't a great deal more yourself, nothing but a little western public school to attend. Your mother graduated from one of the most expensive young women's colleges in the East. The girl would make a brave effort to control her fierce anger and speak without word calm. Aunt Sarah, don't you believe that people who marry should love each other? Love, Aunt Sarah would repeat the word as though it represented a nauseous dose. For pity's sake, don't talk such twaddle to me. I've seen enough of it. I suppose you get those sentimental notions from your mother though. She used to talk in the same strain. She married for love, too, and see what a mess she has made of it. Then would the long-controlled anger blaze? Esther, who had retreated to the window in the hope that a view of her father hoeing lustily on his potato patch would help to keep her tongue in check, turned from it, and spoke with energy. Aunt Sarah, you may say anything you please about me, and I'll try to bear it. I ought to be used to it, I am sure. But if you say a single word against my father, you will find that you have gone too far, that I will not listen to. Hoity-toity, sneered Aunt Sarah, what is the matter with her now? Flare up and strut about like a little rooster I would. It is a pity Joram couldn't see you. He would discover that you are not always such an angel of light as he fancies. What did I say, I wonder, to ruffle your feathers? Everybody knows that your father was and is, and always will be, a poor man, and that your mother went out of her own set to marry him. I thought at the time that it was a piece of folly that father ought not to have allowed, but she wouldn't listen to reason any better than her daughter will. I am her own sister, and it is likely I know what I am talking about. It was then that Esther said the plainest word she had ever spoken to her aunt. I know you are, and nothing about you is a greater mystery than that. How two people so utterly unlike as you and mother can be sisters is a problem. If you did not belong to us at all, we could bear it better. She closed the door through which she was retreating, with the last word, and did not hear even the beginning of her aunt's excited reply. It was two hours afterward that a red-eyed, swollen-faced young woman presented herself at the door of Aunt Sarah's room and spoke low and rapidly. Aunt Sarah, I want to ask your forgiveness for what I said this morning. I was angry, or I would never have spoken so to you. But that is no excuse, and I don't want to make any excuse. I just want to say forgive me. Aha, my lady, said Aunt Sarah. I thought your father would make you eat humble pie for your impudence. Oh, I'll forgive you, of course. I'm used to it, you know. But if I were you, I would try to control that awful temper. The first thing you know, the people who think now that you are just about on a par with the angels will hear of it. Such things leak out. You needn't be afraid of me. I shall keep still. But there are others watching you, and some of them would almost give their eyes for a little attention from Joram Pratt. And if he should find out the kind of girl you are when you are angry, you might not have so much chance to turn the cold shoulder to him. I know what I am talking about, and I warn you as a friend. There are girls who can appreciate that young man if you can't. There was nothing for Esther but silence and retreat. The rage she had thought subdued flamed up afresh, and she dare not trust herself to words. Better to remain under the imputation that she cared what Joram Pratt thought or did than to run the risk of hurting her father and mother again that day. That evening the quiet little woman whom the missionary had brought with him when he came out west sat with him in his study, sewing steadily on the ever-present mending. From time to time she glanced at her husband, busy with his pen and books. At last he tossed down the pen and pushed the largest books from him, drawing his open Bible nearer with the air of a man who had worked hard and now meant to take a little refreshment. Then she spoke. Spencer, if you are through with study for tonight, can you spare a little time to me? There was a note in her voice that called for sympathy, and Mr. Randall gave her a very tender smile as he said heartily. Of course I can, dear. There is always time for you. By the way, am I to go for Esther? No, the Webster girls will be there and the Bentons. To say nothing of Joram Pratt said the father with an amused smile, but his wife did not smile. It is about Esther that I want to talk, she said. I really don't know what we can do, but it seems as though something ought to be done. That boy simply persecutes the child. At first she felt she could not go to-night, although she had promised, and she sent over to make sure that the Websters were going before she would dress. She told me this afternoon that she could not endure this sort of thing any longer, and I don't blame her. If poor Sarah would only... Yes, that is the trouble, said the father, after waiting in vain for his wife to finish her sentence. I could make things plain to Joram, I believe, without hurting the poor fellow's feelings too much, were it not that her constant kindnesses mislead him. It isn't simply her kindnesses, Randall. She says things to him about Esther in such a way that she seems to be quoting from the child, and it does no good for me to talk to her. In fact, it makes matters worse. She thinks I am working against the best interests of my daughter, and that she must help her in spite of me. Spencer, she actually thinks that Esther ought to be urged to marry that boy. Preposterous, said the father, if we could only... then an abrupt pause, after which he laughed with an air of a man who felt a shame-faced laugh was all that was left to him. Not for the world would he say to this long-suffering woman that if they could contrive a way to separate her sister from their daughter's life for a while, the rest might be managed. There was nothing to be gained by saying anything of the kind. Neither home could raise the necessary funds for Aunt Sarah to take the long journey eastward, even had there been no other obstacle, but there was. End of Chapter 4. Recording by Tricia G. Chapter 5 of Esther Reads' Namesake. The slipper-box recording is in the public domain. Esther Reads' Namesake by Pansy. Chapter 5. A Rebel. Much as their guest disliked everything about her western home and outspoken as she was concerning her martyrdom in being obliged to remain there, it was nevertheless discovered that she did not wish to return to the straightened home in the east where the youngest daughter was working strenuously to support her mother in comfort. Aunt Sarah's way of describing her was, Mary is too selfish to live. She is bound up in mother to the degree that she simply can't think of anybody else. She wouldn't care if I half-starved, provided mother was comfortable. Mother and Mary are really very much alike. They care very little what becomes of the rest of the world, provided they can be together and have what they want. The missionary's wife had been long in the school of patients and had learned to make no reply even to such remarks as they did. But they had helped her to understand that her sister Sarah must by no means return to the eastern home so long as it was possible to provide for her in other ways. The long talk which she and her husband had together on the evening in question had no other result than the deepening of their sympathy for each other unless it also increased their sense of helplessness. I don't see but we are shut up to the situation with nothing to do but make the best of it, Mr. Randall said at last with one of the few sighs that he allowed himself in his wife's presence. It was she who smiled and said, Never mind Randall, it has done me good to talk it over with you. Perhaps some way will open that we have not thought of. And the way was opening even then. The next morning's mail brought it to them. A college friend and brother minister who had stopped overnight in a little western manse and had learned more by keen observation than by words, some of the things that lay heavy on the missionary's heart remembered him six months afterwards when there came into his care certain trust monies to be spent in aiding the sons and daughters of missionaries in their education said education to be sought in the particular college which was the hobby of the man who left the trust. Thus all unexpectedly a marvel had worked its way into her life and in the space of a few weeks Esther Reed Randall became a college girl five hundred miles removed from her father's house. In this college a custom obtained by which industrious students could aid substantially in their own support. A regular system of hours, range of employments and a schedule of prices had been evolved a member of the student body serving as secretary. To him the townspeople could at given hours apply for helpers and the students could register at his office and state their preferences. In this way the needs of employers and those desiring employment were met and there was a fair degree of mutual satisfaction. Esther Randall had been among the first of the new students to avail herself of this opportunity and had enrolled herself as willing to help at general housework. It is what I am sure I can do and do well thanks to my dear mother, she wrote home so I have given my name and mentioned just a very few of my many accomplishments and am anxiously awaiting a summons. I feel sure there is somewhere in this town an overburdened housekeeper to whom I am to appear as an angel of light to broil her steaks or wash her dishes in the very best way in the world namely the way my mother does. Only think in this way I can earn my room and board. I am sure that it will take a great big load from father's shoulders and mine too for I like to pay as much of my way as I can. And you needn't be troubled over it, mother dear. It will not be unpleasant to me. There is a very lovely spirit in the college about all such things. There seems to be no caste feeling whatever. The students who help in these ways to meet their expenses are on exactly the same social plane as the others. There are dozens of them who wholly or in part support themselves and the others take it as a matter of course. So please tell Aunt Sarah not to fear that I shall be lowered socially by my industry. The mother was glad that her young daughter could not hear her aunt Sarah's lugubrious sigh and doleful words. Think of a granddaughter of Benedict Bradford washing dishes and sweeping rooms for a living. If father knows what we have all come to, I don't see how he can rest in his grave. Never mind Sarah, was the missionary's cheery rejoinder. Father isn't resting in his grave, remember. I have no doubt but that he is very busy in heaven. And if he knows that our Esther is sweeping rooms and she sweeps according to the pattern, why then, who sweeps a room as by thy law makes that and the action fine, you know? But poor Aunt Sarah did not catch so much as a glimpse of the fine spirit back of the father's cheery words and only said, Well, I know, Spencer, you can make sport out of anything. It must be a comfort not to have a sensitive nature. I often wished that I had been made so. On the afternoon that Esther Randall sat on the steps of Mrs. Victor's side porch and exchanged views with her classmates on theological and various other matters, she had been a college girl for nearly seven months and during five of them she had earned room and board by her work in Mrs. Victor's kitchen. That she did not find life a bed of roses, all who have undertaken to earn their living in such ways will readily understand. It is quite likely that they will understand it better than did the girl herself. She had for so long been accustomed to attributing most of her trials as the direct or indirect result of her Aunt Sarah's influence that it was a matter of surprise as well as disappointment to her that, being several hundred miles removed from the cause of friction, there should still be friction in her life. An earnest purpose to make the most of her opportunities and at the same time save her father every possible penny carried her safely through many troubles but did not keep her from living on what she called the edge of a volcano with an eruption imminent. She sat still on the steps for several minutes watching the two girls until a corner hid them from view. Then with a long drawn sigh went to her duties. Half unconsciously she was letting her thoughts on the contrast between her friends and herself as represented by externals. No girls in college were more to be envied she believed than those two. They represented fathers who apparently lived for the purpose of catering to their daughters' slightest wishes and had substantial bank accounts to aid them. Also both were exceptionally good scholars standing well with their professors generally and being reasonably popular with their classmates. To Esther Randall's eyes the contrasts between them and herself were many and strongly marked. Occasionally she tried to analyze the reasons for their having become almost from the first her intimate friends. There were not many subjects upon which they thought alike yet their intimacy was so marked that their classmates had named them the trio. As Esther exchanged her street dress for one that did duty in the kitchen there was a cloud she could not get away from the contrasts. The girls were at home by this time. They had a suite of rooms in one of the most expensive boarding houses in the city. When Esther felt especially legubrious she dwelt on the fact that these rooms were luxuriously furnished and included even a private bath. It was sometimes difficult not to contrast them with the very straightened quarters and meager accommodations for which she gave daily service. When she was gay she seized her broken nosed picture and as she dashed down two flights of stairs to the kitchen hydrant to fill it told herself that she was going to her private bath. But when she was not gay she hated even these trivial evidences of her cramped life and could not help telling herself that the good things of this world were very unevenly divided. The cloud on her face deepened as she entered the kitchen and the sight that greeted her in the morning. Not only the capacious table but the sink and even the range were piled high with unwashed dishes and cooking utensils. The butler's pantry which separated the kitchen from the dining room was in an equal state of disorder. Everywhere was evidence of a hurriedly cooked meal and then an utter abandonment of the scene of warfare. All this was entirely contrary to the scheduled plan. Esther was supposed to come on duty at five o'clock at dinner for seven persons then to serve at table smuggling in her own dinner between times as best she could then do the dishes with the kitchen in perfect order and make the dining table ready for breakfast. It had been presumed that all this could be accomplished between the hours of five and eight which would cover the three hours of service she had pledged to give at night. Esther in considering it had reasoned with the home kitchen for a base and her mother's house and had said unhesitatingly that she believed she could do it but there were complications undreamed of by her. Continually the dinner was late not from any fault of Esther's who had been trained to habits of rigid punctuality and was to be relied upon to open the kitchen door as the clock was striking five but Miss Catherine was out with guests and must be waited for or the son of the house had not yet come in and had dinner with him or the young people were playing tennis and dinner could not be served until the game was concluded or Miss Marion was seized just at six o'clock with a desire for a certain salad dressing which wouldn't take five minutes to make and which always did take 25. These and dozens of other reasons quite as plausible made the dinner hour periously uncertain to the two members of the family who were trying to live by rule. The mother and her two grown up daughters who had that meal in charge were hurried by some society function and simply compelled to leave things in confusion. Of course this state of things must either make a late dinner or give Esther extra labor afterwards such as could not be crowded into the three hours of service. The mother and her two grown up daughters who had that meal in charge were hurried by some society function and were crowded into the three hours of service. This in brief was one of the problems continually confronting the girl trained to strict ideas of honor. There had seemed to her here to four to be nothing for her to do but give the extra time needed to accomplish her pledged portion of work and to borrow from her hours of sleep to make up the deficiency. But on this day she was in no mood to be brought the fire in subjection to her will. Her lips took a firm setting that made her look much older than she was and the expression on her face was such that had Aunt Sarah been there to comment she would surely have said. Now she's mad she shows it in her eyes. Mrs. Victor came into the room before the table had been cleared for action. Dear, dear, she said deprecatingly. This is dreadful isn't it? I didn't know that Catherine left things in quite so bad a shape. But the poor child couldn't help it. She simply had to be ready for the matinee by three o'clock and we had unexpected company at luncheon as usual. We are the most uncertain family. Well, never mind, we'll make the dinner light and easy to manage. Just a steak and some baked potatoes and canned corn. Did you say there was no corn? Oh, I remember you told me yesterday, didn't you? Well, just phone for it. They're always prompt. Tell them they must be. And we'll just have sliced tomatoes with lettuce for salad. All easy things to manage, you see. As for dessert, make it cake and fruit. Strawberries or peaches, it doesn't matter which. Why, dear me, that dinner will almost get itself, won't it? But it did not. Despite the fact that Mrs. Victor gave what help she could between her calls to the telephone in the side door to chat with the neighbor. Then to the phone for potatoes, to the phone for corn, to the ice box for steak. Then to the phone again to ask why the corn did not come. Then down cellar again for jelly that Mrs. Victor decided must be added to the bill of fare. Despite her utmost effort and having reached a grim resolution to rebel, Esther's sturdy conscience compelled her to make even extraordinary efforts at haste. It was twenty-five minutes past when she was served. But even then Catherine had not arrived, and as two ladies were with her, who were guests, she must be waited for, at least for what Mrs. Victor called a reasonable length of time. It was when Esther, who had ignored her own dinner and given every moment of time to her work, was carrying a tray loaded with freshly dried dishes to their places in the dining room that the clock on the college tower told ate. She gave a troubled look at the table later. She had hoped to be farther along in her work by eight o'clock. There were still many dishes to be washed, and the kitchen table was in wild disorder. In short, there was a full hour of work yet to be done. But Esther had already given her four hours of labor that day, and her resolution stood firm. It strengthened it to remember that she had given even more than her full hour of morning service to get the guest chamber ready for the first time she had been imposed upon it might be born. But it was not the first, nor the dozenth, and justice to her college work simply demanded that she should make a stand for her rights. She set the heavily laden tray on a corner of the dining table and, not permitting herself a glance around the disordered kitchen, sped up the back stairs to the little room on the third floor, which was for her exclusive use. End of Chapter 5 Recording by Tricia G. Chapter 6 Of Esther Read's Namesake This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Esther Read's Namesake by Pansy Chapter 6 The Victors Dearly Beloveds, Oh mommy, mommy, I have been bad again, so bad that I could almost want you not to tell a word of it to the poor dear father. Only of course he must know that I am a servant, and this letter is as always for you both. You want to understand though that I had great provocation. I'll begin with excuses as naughty children always do. They are simply dreadful these victors about piling up the work and having dinner late and expecting me to crowd it all in, the work not the dinner. I've done it a good many times, not in my hours though by any means, but on Saturday I made a solemn resolution not to do it. It was really a promise, father, and you wouldn't have me break a promise, I should hope. But I tried with all my might to get the work done. I did honestly. I took no time even to eat, but there had been company to luncheon, and when I came on duty at five all the cooking dishes and most of the others stood around in sticky heaps in the way. Dinner was late of course, but the kitchen and pantry imagined. Mother, if you should put every dish and kettle and pan that we have in the world in the middle of the floor it wouldn't begin to describe the scene. If these victors had any more dishes that could be used in getting luncheon they would use them. Oh, to be sure I had washed some of them piles and piles indeed, but the stickiest ones and the dried-up-est and she made an unusually messy mess for a salad and I think used a fresh dish for each egg and raisin and bread crumb. Oh, don't let me undertake to describe the scene. Words fail. I left it. I did, mommy and father, your daughter Esther Reed Randall, in spite of her honoured name and the hopes and aspiration which it inspires, did just that. I went to my books to try to spare, but wickedness as usual met its own reward. Flowery bowls and oily plates and dried-on skillets danced before my eyes and unwashed muffin tins spread themselves over each page, and at last I went to bed in despair. But I dreamed that I tipped over the range and scattered the burning coals all over the dining table. Have I told you that I am not this term on duty on Sunday in the afternoon so I can get the dinner without help and do up the work while the family sleep? So I did not have to go down to that awful kitchen and I hope you understand that I had the grace to go without any breakfast. I waited until all the family were supposed to have gone to church and it was time for me to begin preparations for dinner. But I found Mrs. Victor you didn't go to church I said civilly an idiotic thing to say I will admit because of course she knew it without my telling her. No, she said very stiffly I could hardly venture on that since I did not know what to expect. From the appearance of things here this morning I supposed that at the very least you had been taken suddenly ill or been called away at a moment's warning. Still I resisted the temptation to compliment her on her humanity in supposing that I might have been taken suddenly ill and yet leaving me to my own distress all the morning and only remarked coldly that I did not understand why she should not have expected me at the appointed hour as usual since I believed that I had never yet been five minutes late. Then I added that I had worked up to the full limit of my extra work done as I possibly could but that my college duties simply would not admit of my giving any more time to housework. I thought that would remind her of the number of extra hours that I had already given and that she would say they ought not to expect that or some other mollifying thing and I was prepared to meet her more than half way but she wouldn't come a step she acted precisely as though saying like an ill-used person she said resignedly that of course there was no use in talking over such matters she had probably expected too much she would admit that having understood that I was the daughter of a minister she had fancied that they would not be held by me to hard and fast rules and that if once in a while they needed a few minutes more of service I would be willing to accommodate them now mother wasn't that exasperating talk once in a while indeed when she knows perfectly well that nine times out of ten they have dinner so late that I cannot get to my room until nine o'clock at least and I am often later than that then the idea of lugging in the fact that I am a minister's daughter what had that to do with it pray and yet poor father and that if Mrs. Victor knew what a good, good minister I have for a father matters would have been worse yet we said a good deal more both of us she vexed me so that I told her frankly what I had made up my mind not to mention just then that her work kept me in the kitchen until after nine o'clock five nights out of six then she said that I must be terribly slow she was sure that either of her had been brought up to work in the kitchen either then I said that I had been brought up to do whatever I had to do as well in as quickly as I could and that ever since I had been with her I had tried to do my best but that if I did not suit her she was under no obligation to keep me until the close of the year and that if she wished it I would go away at once now poor dear little mother and my long suffering troubled father don't look too sorrowfully I know I was mean I confess it yes ma'am I am dreadfully ashamed of myself and have been all day because you see I had the advantage of her and knew it I am a pretty fair cook and a reasonably fast worker you know I am mommy dear so what's the use of our trying to hide it besides it is all owing to the training you gave me and help here is very scarce indeed there are more people looking for college girls and I have learned a great deal Mrs. Victor knew and I knew that I had only to announce myself as unemployed to have dozens of opportunities why mother I know a lovely home just such as I would like to be in that would clap its hands for joy if I should go over there this evening and say that I had come to stay yes ma'am I know that it made it all the meaner please don't tell me so for I feel it a way down to my shoes do let me hurry to say the next thing I had really no intention not the slightest of leaving Mrs. Victor much as I should like to do so unless she sent me away which I knew was extremely improbable I just felt a mean little desire to remind her that it wasn't necessary for her to sacrifice herself in order to keep her contract with me I had my reward too such as it was she looked simply scared over my words and made all haste to tell me that of course she did not wish me to go had not thought of my doing such a thing she always tried to keep her word and she knew I was a girl who did the same in fact she should not think of sending me away even though I did not suit her at all after I had made all my arrangements to stay with her through the college year she hoped she understood her duty better than that now mommy dear could I let her pat herself in that way about doing her duty I don't think it would have been in human nature if it had been dark in silence at least it wasn't in my nature I reminded her that it had been distinctly stipulated when our engagement was made that it was to continue through the year only on the ground that both parties were satisfied to have it so and that I had no right and no desire to hold her a moment beyond her wishes that was meanness spelled all in capitals I know it father you needn't say a word she was at my mercy as neither time nor strength to add my four hours of honest service to all her other work and her daughters are too much engrossed with music and art and society to help her mommy she began to be very nice to me not because she felt one bit like it but because she thought she must in order to keep me and I never felt so humiliated in my life well we patched up a sort of peace she made some wild promises about being punctual in future which she cannot keep poor thing it isn't she who is unpunctual then she went away at last and left me and I made the table look beautiful and got as nice a dinner as I could and they were everyone prompt to the minute and had only two unexpected guests and Miss Marion dried all the silver and glass and wanted to help with the other dishes and I wouldn't let her and all the time I felt small and mean and they felt indignant I was the subject of conversation throughout that dinner despite the guests they are very much at home here and family matters are discussed freely before them I felt it in the air and in the sibilant warning hush of Mrs. Victor when she heard me coming and because they were indignant and talked too loud I could not help overhearing some things despite their sudden silences things that hurt for instance this ministers daughters are no better so far as I can see Mrs. Gleason says this one's father is an excellent man I hope she doesn't inherit her temper from him then Miss Catherine offered a suggestion this girl is a member of the church and a very regular attendant at Bible class which remark set the son of the house into a burst of laughter and he said Kathy what on earth has that to do with the subject under discussion is there any connection between Bible class and temper in the kitchen why I don't know said Miss Catherine don't people profess that Bible study and all that sort of thing helps them to be unselfish and good natured whether or not the young man was made to see the connection I shall never know for at that point my troublesome conscious compelled me to rattle the dishes so that I could hear no more but oh how ashamed I felt my poor father having to be dragged into disrepute again on account of his unworthy daughter who had longed just longed to rush in there and say you are right minister's daughters are not what they should be at least not all are but it isn't father's fault if I were like him no amount of selfishness and exaction on your part could swerve me one hair's breadth from the straight white line of beautiful living but the trouble is that though my blessed father and mother did their best for me I am not one bit like either of them I am just my miserable hateful self I am more seriously dear mother and even more seriously dear father I am bowed to the dust over the thought that has somehow come to me with new force today that people are judging of my father and mother by what they see in me isn't that awful I with such exhibits of fallen human nature as I know how to make to be credited to you mother dear I shall try harder I really think I shall though at this moment I don't see how flesh and blood I have already done but with your reputation at stake it seems as though I must learn to control my volcanic temper oh that one little corner of the real ester reeds mantel could have fallen upon miserable me at the same time I want to be strictly just even to myself and I think you ought to be told that the victors are every last one of them agravoking other people besides me have discovered this in other homes all commiserate me no sir I do not talk over the victors with the girls now father I am ashamed of you for thinking that a daughter of yours could stoop so low as that I don't open my lips about the family I live with of course but one of the girls when she heard where I was living shrugged her shoulders and said oh you poor child and the others laughed significantly then occasionally I am asked if I am still with the victors and I am expressed now mommy don't think dreadful things the family is eminently respectable I assure you but they think that their rooms and their board are worth a great deal and they mean to get their money's worth out of any person whom they honour by allowing her to live with them the deep down trouble is that they are poor and want to dress and eat and act as though they were rich that is what I believe the more I think of it it is the door of poverty now even I could be angelic most of the time I think if I had all the money I wanted to lavish on myself and my best beloveds still you say Esther Reid was poor why her family even kept borders didn't they mother dear I have reformed really and truly so far as the victors are concerned I shall not rebel again if they don't get ready for dinner until the next morning and please do know that I am sorry and ashamed I am going to bed now your loving, horrid, repentant homesick daughter Esther Reid Randall P.S. Professor Langham has invited me to attend the next recital that is supposed to be an honour not often attained to by college girls especially by mere sophomores if it were not for the victors and a few other well things I should feel quite sought up this spring is Aunt Sarah reconciled yet I don't believe there is a line in this letter that can be read to her oh mommy mommy I love you as for father I oh he knows all about it kiss me both of you this minute now I'm gone to bed Esther they laughed a little the father and mother over this letter as they read it together in the privacy of the study after Aunt Sarah had retired Esther that they could not but laugh yet there was room for seriousness and for indignation it really seems too bad said the usually patient mother that she should have to be so tried by the careless and selfish habits of others it is hard enough for the child to have to spend any of her time in doing housework it seems as though she might at least have gone into a home that could appreciate her the father's thoughts ran in another channel and the mother he said and even for the stranger for whom she was named but does she remember that other one whose name she also bears and who must be honored or dishonored according as she presents his character to the world it was this thought and the talk that followed it which led her mother in her next letter to Esther to say if I had another daughter to name I think I should call her honor wouldn't it help her perhaps but of that other greater name honor Randall should you have liked it dear end of chapter 6 recording by Tricia G chapter 7 of Esther Reid's namesake this LibriVox recording is in the public domain Esther Reid's namesake by Pansy chapter 7 Scruples well said Faith Farnham with a discontented little laugh if you simply won't do anything but I must say my beloved Esther Reid Randall that for a girl who can persistently not to say obstinately stand in her own light I think you will take the prize it was Sunday afternoon and the two girls were on Mrs. Victor's side porch which was deserted save for them the various members of the household were busy with their after-dinner naps with the exception of Selma the high school girl who had a short time before her schoolmates Esther sat back in one of the large porch rockers in as relaxed a position as her overwrought nerves would permit although it was still early in the afternoon her duties in the Victor kitchen were done for the day the presence of guests who must take the two o'clock train having necessitated an early dinner she looked tired with a sort of weariness that the easy chair and the sweet rose perfumed air of the porch did not touch and presently broke forth again Esther what is the use in being so absurd you know you need the rest that this would be to you you look tired to death and the air up there among the pines and the eucalyptus trees is something to remember then we shall have a lovely little spread on the rocks and you needn't trouble to take a single thing I had my basket packed before I came out with lunch in enough for six besides the boys are going to order you will have the comfort once more of eating a repast that you haven't planned and got ready yourself I should think that alone would be quite a treat last summer vacation I had to think up Sunday evening lunches for the whole family and it nearly gave me nervous prostration and then Esther the drive home by moonlight will be simply entrancing tonight it's a full moon you know you will be all rested up for your next week's work come do go dear just to please me Esther sat straighter in her chair and ran her fingers through her fluffy hair lifting it back from her forehead in a way she had when tired and also when annoyed I wish you wouldn't faith she said letting a little of her annoyance creep into her tone I told you at the first that I never went on Sunday frolics and I thought you understood me faith made an impatient movement it isn't a frolic she said why will you be so unreasonable it will be as decorous well managed a Sunday crowd as was ever planned why there are three four church members in it and two of them are ministers daughters or daughter and son what more do you want I don't want anything of any of them except to be left alone if they were all ministers what difference do you suppose that would make to me I tell you I don't believe in such ways of spending Sundays and although I live in a little backwards town there to get up Sunday picnics or Sunday rides or anything of the sort they leave all that to the people who don't pretend to have any religion it was then that faith rose up from her hassock with a determined air well she said I am sorry you persist in looking at it in that light I felt like urging because I thought you really needed the rest that it would give you and Professor Langham said he was sure you did it would be a well guarded crowd you see I tell you what Esther if I were you I would give up working at that religion of yours while you are away from home you take it too hard it is worse than the name a great deal Blanche now simply amuses me with her spasmodic efforts at harmonizing her old life with the new but you my dear actually tire me Esther's irritation had now passed beyond her control I wish you would let my religion alone it may not be of any account to you but such as it is it belongs to me and I do not care to have it dragged out every little while for discussion I am sure I don't obtrude it on you that is just where you are mistaken my child you do it is what I am complaining of this very minute or rather you do worse than that you obtrude it upon yourself it is just that which is keeping you from taking a much needed drive into the country and getting rest I assure you if I were going to indulge in any religion which may heaven forbid I should take blanches instead of yours because hers doesn't do her or anybody else any harm while yours serves to make you more or less miserable most of the time never mind dear forgive me I ought not to have said that you can't help it I presume you were born that way I must go this minute I didn't think it was so late I don't suppose there is any hope in a half hour or less you might have reconsidered oh poor child I won't say another word only goodbye Esther sat very still after her guest had gone there were books and papers on the chair beside her that she had brought out to read but she did not read her Bible was among them she had brought it with the feeling that she might study her lesson for the next Sunday but she had not opened it at all she was not quite sure what it was for only Professor Langham was the Bible teacher and it seemed that he had nothing better to do with his Sunday afternoons than to drive to Rock Springs with a company of his students she pushed back her chair until the heavy vines shielded her entirely from passersby and gave herself up to what she would have called thinking in reality it was a disultery review of her uneventful unsatisfactory life not only that but she obliged her miserable self to admit that she had made those about her more or less unhappy she could recall innumerable instances in which the look of perplexity and undoubted anxiety on her father's face had been called up by some outburst of hers as for her poor mother had she not practically spent her life in trying to make life more comfortable or at least more tolerable for her one daughter and how had the daughter repaid her left under the restrictions of poverty and under all the limitations of her little narrowed life above all how persistently intolerant she had been of Aunt Sarah her mother's own sister it was of no use to tell herself such a state of things had been the necessary outcome of Aunt Sarah's disposition that thought had ceased to comfort her when she remembered how patiently her mother and father had born with that same disposition then when the sudden opportunity and association with books and students and teachers how miserable she had made herself over the question of clothes what heroic sacrifices she had permitted on the part of that dear mother and then had wept over them in a secrecy that could not be kept secret partly because the sacrifices had to be made but more oh a great deal more she was sure because the result was so pitiful it had required courage to come to college with a wardrobe as limited as hers for the same reason it required daily courage to stay there yet the college girl was ashamed that this was so her cheeks burned over the memory of certain social functions with which she had declined to be associated and had allowed the girls to think that it was because of conscientious scruples yet the real reason had been nothing to wear and yet conscientious scruples were among her grievances they were continually cropping out as no social life left for her cards and dancing appeared to be the chief almost the only entertainments offered at ordinary social functions it being taken as a matter of course that one or the other would satisfy all tastes Esther had accepted such invitations a number of times with the result that she had felt more lonely and out of place than at any other time since she left home apparently she was the only girl with scruples to entertain her together with the surprise of everyone with whom she came in contact that she neither danced nor played cards so annoyed the girl that she had almost resolved to turn recluse rather than put herself in the way of such embarrassments worse than the astonishment of the many had been the efforts of the few to aid her it's an awfully easy game volunteered a good natured freshman who had stood near her for some time evidently pitying her loneliness if you like to take a hand I can show you in five minutes how the thing goes it really isn't much more complicated than the tit-tat-toe of our childhood didn't you enjoy tit-tat-toe once upon a time very much she said smiling still I think I will not renew my childhood tonight I wish you would though he had said heartily it's great fun when you once get a hold of it and things seem to be pretty slow here tonight for the people who neither dance she had resisted his kindness with a positiveness that was almost rudeness but she had not said anything about scruples the reason was that she was ashamed of her scruples and then she was ashamed of herself for being ashamed of them she had written home about that evening's experience in a way that caused her mother and father to sit long over the dying coals in the study great I don't think I shall accept any more social invitations although the letter ran I haven't time for them nor gowns for that matter sometimes I feel like a queer little nun in my one good dress that has to do duty on all occasions still to be honest it isn't so much the time though that is very scarce nor the gowns though they are scarcer as the question what I shall do with myself how should you feel mother to be the only girl in a large company who neither danced nor played with cards rather how did you feel when you were a girl and had such experiences you have never told me about them or didn't you have them perhaps the young people of your day were not limited to one or the other of these amusements as they seem now to be I cannot imagine you standing around awkwardly as I do your main chance for conversation being no thank you I don't play cards thank you very much I don't dance oh no I have never even made the attempt you are very kind but I will not undertake it this time I am not in a dancing mood that is in all honesty the situation here I have not exaggerated one bit out of the entire company I seem to be marked as the girl with scruples occasionally I am forced to the wall and it becomes necessary to attempt an explanation and that is the most embarrassing of all for I am ashamed of my scruples I have no reflection I find that they are not mine at all but are second hand honestly mother father I find that I do not at this moment know one satisfactory reason why I should not spend an occasional evening playing a game of cards with my friends as I watch the others I find that the game looks quite as sensible to me and as innocent as the old fashioned what is my thought like or any of those games with which we used to try to make dancing now is different I can see for myself how far from true refinement it is even in its milder exhibitions every time I look on I see girls, good sweet girls allow in the dance attentions that under any other conditions would be considered insulting and I have sufficient imagination as well as sufficient knowledge of the world to feel sure even without much thought that the trend of the amusement is downward in fact there are girls in this very college whose ways of talking about dances that they have attended is enough to make one who has been brought up by a careful mother blush for them I have reached the conclusion that the natural instinct of purity which every true girl has would lead her to shrink instinctively from that amusement as we see it in society today provided her young girlhood had been held from all familiarity with it but cards are different when I tried to think out my objections I questioned me I found that my most vivid impression in regard to them was based on the fact that you father took from me in haste in an evident dismay that pack of cards which our summer border left in his room and burned them in the grate as fast as the flames could be made to devour them that was the summer I was 14 I remember I got the impression from your manner rather than your words that they were not fit for the amusement it is true that I am familiar with the common objections to games of chance but used in social circles for an hour's entertainment such objections do not seem to apply don't be frightened father I have not been playing cards I have too vivid a remembrance of your face as you poked that glowing mass in the grate to make it burn the faster to care to venture on the amusement and I have steadily declined to be shown how but I stand quite alone and narrow and ignorant which last I am and please ma'am and sir I should like to be instructed such was the message that kept father and mother sitting late in the little study not that they said much but they were so consciously thinking the same thoughts that when Mr. Randall broke the silence he spoke the very words that his wife expected to help people to be really acquainted with God Helen that was to have been my work in the world have I signally failed with my own daughter our ester is surely the Lord's own but she is a Christian said his wife but she is like too many of us satisfied with following a far off sometimes I think of her mother her voice broke at that and the missionary bent downward and kissed the tears from the face of his bride of 20 years as he said God never gave to any girl a better mother than ours has Helen you must be just even to yourself and you and I must remember that God himself has to be the teacher of some lessons all that we can do is to ask him to reveal himself to her in his time I confess that I sometimes fear less than our anxiety for her mental development we have sent her into a place of peculiar temptation it seemed a direct answer to our prayer for guidance murmured the mother and the father caught at the comfort in her words and so it was and you and I must trust him I pray not that thou shouldst take them out of the world but that thou shouldst keep them from evil he can do it with a sudden leap of thought of which mothers are capable Mrs. Randall's next words were I am afraid the poor child feels keenly the contrast between herself and others in the matter of clothes she has nothing really nice I would not worry about that said the father sturdily she went trials of that sort will not injure her permanently but the mother being a mother though she said no more wished with all her heart that she could contrive one more good dress for the child end of chapter 7 recording by Tricia G