“But it seems to me that some of us have no special work to do, nor any special faculty for doing it,” she said. “Here am I, for instance. What am I good for? I seem to myself to be just one of those creatures who are made for nothing but to fill up the spaces between the people who amount to something.”
Mrs. Northmore pressed her hand for a moment lightly on the dark appealing eyes of the girl. “If we are in earnest,” she said gently, “and if it is usefulness, not praise that we are caring about, we shall find our work; and be sure it will seem special to us if we love it as we ought.”
There were a few minutes of silence; then the girl said more quietly, but with a note of despondence in her voice: “If I had gone to school longer and tried to fit myself for something, perhaps I might have found out what I was good for. I didn’t care much when I left Lance Hall, and I never studied as hard as I might while I was there; but I’ve thought more about it since then.”
A look of pain came into Mrs. Northmore’s face. It was a regret the girl had never expressed before, but one which had been often in her own thoughts. Yet the year in boarding-school, which had followed Esther’s graduation from the high school, had been all that Dr. Northmore could afford to give his daughter. She was considered in the region quite an accomplished girl, but her mother, at least, realized what a broader and more serious education might have done for her. She realized it at this moment with unusual force.
“I wish you might have had the best the schools can give, and some other things you have missed, Esther,” she said. And then she added, “If we were only a little richer!”
There was a tone in Mrs. Northmore’s voice which one heard but seldom, and the girl noted it with a sudden compunction. “I haven’t missed anything that I deserved to have,” she said quickly, “and I’ve had more than most girls. I know that. It’s you who go without things, mother. You’re always planning and saving, and pretending you don’t want to have anything or go anywhere.” And then the impatience came into her tone again, though she was not thinking of herself, as she added, “Sometimes I can’t see how it is that we have so little money to spend, when father has such a good practice.”
Mrs. Northmore sighed. “Your father has never looked very sharply after his own interests in money matters. He has been too busy with other things, and too generous, for that,” she said. And then she added, almost gayly: “But I have never lacked for anything; and it is so much easier to bear the sort of mistakes your father makes than it would be to bear some others! The ’handle’—you remember what Epictetus says about the ’two handles’—why, the handle to bear our sort of trouble with stands out all round, and is so big one can’t help laying hold of it.”
Perhaps it was the light-heartedness with which she spoke, more than the slight reproof which the words contained, that made Esther’s head drop in her mother’s lap. “I wish I were half as good as you are, mother,” she whispered.
The voices of Kate and Virgie from the direction of the kitchen made her spring to her feet a minute later. “I don’t want to be here when they come,” she said, dashing her handkerchief across her eyes. “I’m tired and disagreeable. Good night.”
She was off before the others had reached the porch, and a half hour later, when Kate followed her to her room, she was in bed, more than willing that her sister should think her closed eyelids drowsy with sleep, an impression which did not, however, prevent the other from indulging in some lively monologue as she undressed. Her father had come home, she said, and was delighted with the report of the day, but there was a lot left to tell him in the morning. “Besides,” she added, “I could see there was something on mother’s mind that she wanted to talk over with him alone, so I came away.”