“Yes, certainly, I’ll get up at once.  Have I kept you waiting, Abbie?”

“Oh no, not at all; generally we breakfast at nine, but mother gave orders last night to delay until half-past nine this morning.”

Ester turned to the little clock in great amazement; it was actually ten minutes to nine!  What an idea!  She never remembered sleeping so late in her life before.  Why, at home the work in the dining-room and kitchen must all be done by this time, and Sadie was probably making beds.  Poor Sadie!  What a time she would have!  “She will learn a little about life while I am away,” thought Ester complacently, as she stood before the mirror, and pinned the dainty frill on her new pink cambric wrapper, which Sadie’s deft fingers had fashioned for her.

Ester had declined the assistance of Maggie—­feeling that though she knew perfectly well how to make her own toilet, she did not know how to receive assistance in the matter.

“Now I will leave you for a little,” Abbie said, taking up her tiny Bible.

“Ester, where is your Bible?  I suppose you have it with you?”

Ester looked annoyed.

“I don’t believe I have,” she said hurriedly.  “I packed in such haste, you see, and I don’t remember putting it in at all.”

“Oh, I am sorry—­you will miss it so much!  Do you have a thousand little private marks in your Bible that nobody else understands?  I have a great habit of reading in that way.  Well, I’ll bring you one from the library that you may mark just as much as you please.”

Ester sat herself down, with a very complacent air, beside the open window, with the Bible which had just been brought her, in her lap.  Clearly she had been left alone that she might have opportunity for private devotion, and she liked the idea very much; to be sure, she had not been in the habit of reading in the Bible in the morning, but that, she told herself, was simply because she never had time hardly to breathe in the mornings at home; there she had beefsteak to cook, and breakfast rolls to attend to, she said disdainfully, as if beefsteak and breakfast rolls were the most contemptible articles in the world, entirely beneath the notice of a rational being; but now she was in a very different atmosphere; and at nine o’clock of a summer morning was attired in a very becoming pink wrapper, finished with the whitest of frills; and sat at her window, a young lady of elegant leisure, waiting for the breakfast-bell.  Of course she could read a chapter in the Bible now, and should enjoy it quite as much as Abbie did.  She had never learned that happy little habit of having a much-used, much-worn, much-loved Bible for her own personal and private use; full of pencil marks and sacred meanings, grown dear from association, and teeming with memories of precious communings.  She had one, of course—­a nice, proper-looking Bible—­and if it chanced to be convenient when she was ready to read, she used it; if not, she