'I am happy now, papa; more happy than other children.'
'But you were not?'
'No, papa; for a while I was not.'
'Why? What did you want, that you had not?—except your mother,' the colonel added, with a sigh of consciousness that there might be a missing something there.
'I was not thinking of her, papa,' Esther said slowly.
'Of what, then?' The colonel was intensely curious.
'I was very happy, as long as Pitt was at home.'
'William Dallas! But what is he to you? he's a collegian, and you are a little girl.'
'Papa, the collegian was very kind to the little girl,' Esther said, with a smile that was very bright, and also merry with a certain sense of humour.
'I grant it; still—it is unreasonable And was it because he was gone, that you wanted comfort?'