A Red Wallflower

Esther drew a long breath.

'Then you speak to Barker, and I will get some oysters,' said Pitt with a parting kiss, and was off in a moment.

The luncheon after all passed off quite tolerably well. The colonel took the oysters, and Pitt, with a kind of grim acquiescence. He was an old soldier, and no doubt had not forgotten all the lessons once learned in that impressive school; and as every one knows, to accept the inevitable and to make the best of a lost battle are two of those lessons. Not that Colonel Gainsborough would seriously have tried to fight off Pitt and his pretensions, if he could; at least, not as things were. Pitt had told him his own circumstances; and the colonel knew that without barbarity he could not refuse ease and affluence and an excellent position for his daughter, and condemn her to school-keeping and Major Street for the rest of her life; especially since the offer was accompanied with no drawbacks, except the one trifle, that Esther must marry. That was an undoubtedly bitter pill to swallow; but the colonel swallowed it, and hardly made a wry face. He would be glad to get away from Major Street himself. So he ate his oysters, as I said, grimly; was certainly courteous, if also cool; and Pitt even succeeded in making the conversation flow passably well, which is hard to do, when it rests upon one devoted person alone. Esther did everything but talk.

After the meal was over, the colonel lingered only a few minutes, just enough for politeness, and then went off to his room again, with the dry and somewhat uncalled-for remark, that they 'did not want him.'

'That is true!' said Pitt humorously.

'Pitt,' said Esther hurriedly, 'if you don't mind, I want to get my work. There is something I must do, and I can do it just as well while you are talking.'

She went off, and returned with drawing-board and pencils; took her seat, and prepared to go on with a drawing that had been begun.

'What are the claims of this thing to be considered work?' said Pitt, after watching her a minute or two.

'It is a copy, that I shall need Monday morning. Only a little thing. I can attend to you just the same.'

'A copy for whom?'

'One of my scholars,' she said, with a smile at him.

'That copy will never be wanted.'

'Yes, I want it for Monday; and Monday I should have no time to do it; so I thought I would finish it now. It will not take me long, Pitt.'

'Queen Esther,' said he, laying his hand over hers, 'all that is over.'

'Oh no, Pitt! – how should it?' she said, looking at him now, since it was no use to look at her paper.

'I cannot have you doing this sort of work any longer.'

'But!' she said, flushing high, 'yes, I must.'

'That has been long enough, my queen! I cannot let you do it any longer. You may give me lessons; nobody else.'

'But!' – said Esther, catching her breath; then, not willing to open the whole chapter of discussion she saw ahead, she caught at the nearest and smallest item. 'You know, I am under obligations; and I must meet them until other arrangements are made. I am expected, I am depended on; I must not fail. I must give this lesson Monday, and others.'

'Then I will do this part of the work,' said he, taking the pencil from her fingers. 'Give me your place, please.'

Esther gave him her chair and took his. And then she sat down and watched the drawing. Now and then her eyes made a swift passage to his face for a half second, to explore the features so well known and yet so new; but those were a kind of fearful glances, which dreaded to be caught, and for the most part her eyes were down on the drawing and on the hands busied with it. Hands, we know, tell of character; and Esther's eyes rested with secret pleasure on the shapely fingers, which in their manly strength and skilful agility corresponded so well to what she knew of their possessor. The fingers worked on, for a time, silently.

'Pitt, this is oddly like old times!' said Esther at last.

'Things have got into their right grooves again,' said he contentedly.

'But what are you doing? That is beautiful! – but you are making it a great deal too elaborate and difficult for my scholar. She is not far enough advanced for that.'

'I'll take another piece of paper, then, and begin again. What do you want?'

'Just a tree, lightly sketched, and a bit of rock under it; something like that. She is a beginner.'

'A tree and a rock?' said Pitt. 'Well, here you shall have it. But,

Queen Esther, this sort of thing cannot go on, you know?'

'For a while it must.'

'For a very little while! In fact, I do not see how it can go on at all. I will go and see your school madam and tell her you have made another engagement.'

'But every honest person fulfils the obligations he is under, before assuming new ones.'

'That's past praying for!' said Pitt, with a shake of his head. 'You have assumed the new ones. Now the next thing is to get rid of the old. I must go back to my work soon; and, Queen Esther, your majesty will not refuse to go with me?'

He turned and stretched out his hand to her as he spoke. In the action, in the intonation of the last words, in the look which went with them, there was something very difficult for Esther to withstand. It was so far from presuming, it was so delicate in its urgency, there was so much wistfulness in it, and at the same time the whole magnetism of his personal influence. Esther placed her hand within his, she could not help that; the bright colour flamed up in her cheeks; words were not ready.

'What are you thinking about?' said he.

'Papa,' Esther said, half aloud; but she was thinking of a thousand things all at once.

'I'll undertake the colonel,' said he, going back to his drawing, without letting go Esther's hand. 'Colonel Gainsborough is not a man to be persuaded; but I think in this case he will be of my mind.'

He was silent again, and Esther was silent too, with her heart beating, and a quiet feeling of happiness and rest gradually stealing into her heart and filling it; like as the tide at flood comes in upon the empty shore. Whatever her father might think upon the just mooted question, those two hands had found each other, once and for all. Thoughts went roving, aimlessly, meanwhile, as thoughts will, in such a flood-tide of content. Pitt worked on rapidly. Then a word came to Esther's lips.

'Pitt, you have become quite an Englishman, haven't you?'

'No more than you are a Englishwoman.'

'I think, I am rather an American,' said Esther; 'I have lived here nearly all my life.'

'Do you like New York?'

'I was not thinking of New York. Yes, I like it. I think I like any place where my home is.'

'Would you choose your future home rather in Seaforth, or in London?

You know, I am at home in both.'

Esther would not speak the woman's answer that rose to her lips, the immediate response, that where he was would be what she liked best. It flushed in her cheek and it parted her lips, but it came not forth in words. Instead came a cairn question of business.

'What are the arguments on either side?'

'Well,' said Pitt, shaping his 'rock' with bold strokes of the pencil, 'in Seaforth the sun always shines, or that is my recollection of it.'

'Does it not shine in London?'

'No, as a rule.'

Esther thought it did not matter!