'My dear, you stay too long in the cold. Is William gone?'
'Oh yes, papa.'
'This is not the right paper I want; this is an August paper. I want the one for the last week in July.'
Esther went and rummaged again among the pile of newspapers, mechanically, finding it hard to command her attention to such an indifferent business. She brought the July paper at last.
'Papa, do you think he will ever come back?' she asked, trembling with pain and the effort not to show it.
'Come back? Who? William Dallas? Why shouldn't he come back? His parents are here; if he lives, he will return to them, no doubt.'
Esther sat down and said no more. The earth seemed to her dreadfully empty.
CHAPTER XIII.
LETTERS.
And so life seemed for many days to the child. She could not shake off the feeling, nor regain any brightness of spirit. Dull, dull, everything in earth and heaven seemed to be. The taste and savour had gone out of all her pleasures and occupations. She could not read, without the image of Pitt coming between her and the page; she could not study, without an unendurable sense that he was no longer there nor going to be there to hear her lessons. She had no heart for walks, where every place recalled some memory of Pitt, and what they had done or said there together; she shunned the box of coins, and hardly cared to gather one of the few lingering fall flowers. And the last of them were soon gone, for the pleasant season was ended. Then came rains and clouds and winds, and Esther was shut up to the house.