"If it is any comfort to you, love, you know that you have our prayers," says Mrs. Brandon, squeezing Esther's hand.
"We have set apart a special day with several Christian friends," says Bessy, with animation, "to wrestle in prayer for you, that this searching dispensation may be blessed to your conversion—that you may find the Lord."
"Thanks," answers Esther, meekly, too broken-down to resent even the indignity of being set up on a metaphorical stool of repentance, amid a select circle of Miss Bessy's Christian friends.
"If we could send you anything from Plas Berwyn—" begins Mrs. Brandon.
"Any books or leaflets," interrupts Bessy.
"Any eatables, or anything of that kind," amends her mother. "I daresay you have not been thinking much about housekeeping lately, my poor child; and you know whenever you feel inclined to come to us for good, you will always find open hearts and open arms," concludes the good old woman, suiting her action to her words, and folding Esther in a black bombazine embrace.
"Thank you very much," replies the girl, gratefully, her low, sad voice almost smothered by her mamma-in-law's bonnet strings, amongst which her little disconsolate head is lying perdue.
"We are only broken cisterns, you should remember, mamma," says Bessy, a little reprovingly of her parent's carnal materialism; "leaky vessels, all of us! You should direct Esther to the one Ebenezer."
The race of Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite, is by no means extinct: if not in the male line, at all events in the female, it still survives in the person of many a Miss Bessy Brandon.