"Now I have you all to myself," that young lady said, with a happy smile, as she turned the key on the retreating Maggie and wheeled an ottoman to Ester's side. "Where shall we commence? I have so very much to say and hear; I want to know all about Aunt Laura, and Sadie, and the twins. Oh, Ester, you have a little brother; aren't you so glad he is a little boy?"
"Why, I don't know," Ester said, hesitatingly; then more decidedly, "No; I am always thinking how glad I should be if he were a young man, old enough to go out with me, and be company for me."
"I know that is pleasant; but there are very serious drawbacks. Now, there's our Ralph, it is very pleasant to have him for company; and yet—Well, Ester, he isn't a Christian, and it seems all the time to me that he is walking on quicksands. I am in one continual tremble for him, and I wish so often that he was just a little boy, no older than your brother Alfred; then I could learn his tastes, and indeed mold them in a measure by having him with me a great deal, and it does seem to me that I could make religion appear such a pleasant thing to him, that he couldn't help seeking Jesus for himself. Don't you enjoy teaching Alfred?"
Poor, puzzled Ester! With what a matter-of-course air her cousin asked this question. Could she possibly tell her that she sometimes never gave Alfred a thought from one week's end to another, and that she never in her life thought of teaching him a single thing.
"I am not his teacher," she said at length "I have no time for any such thing; he goes to school, you know, and mother helps him."
"Well," said Abbie, with a thoughtful air, "I don't quite mean teaching, either; at least not lessons and things of that sort, though I think I should enjoy having him depend on me in all his needs; but I was thinking more especially of winning him to Jesus; it seems so much easier to do it while one is young. Perhaps he is a Christian now; is he?"
Ester merely shook her head in answer. She could not look in those earnest blue eyes and say that she had never, by word or act, asked him to come to Jesus.
"Well, that is what I mean; you have so much more chance than I, it seems to me. Oh, my heart is so heavy for Ralph! I am all alone. Ester, do you know that neither my mother nor my father are Christians, and our home influence is—; well, is not what a young man needs. He is very—gay they call it. There are his friends here in the city, and his friends in college,—none of them the style of people that I like him to be with,—and only poor little me to stem the tide of worldliness all around him. There is one thing in particular that troubles me—he is, or rather he is not—," and here poor Abbie stopped, and a little silence followed. After a moment she spoke again: "Oh, Ester, you will learn what I mean without my telling you; it is something in which I greatly need your help. I depend upon you; I have looked forward to your coming, on his account as well as on my own. I know it will be better for him."
Ester longed to ask what the "something" was, and what was expected of her; but the pained look on Abbie's face deterred her, and she contented herself by saying:
"Where is he now?"