And seeming to be certain that his directions would be followed, the doctor vanished.

For only about a quarter of a minute did Ester stand irresolute.  Dr. Van Anden’s tone and manner were full of his usual authority—­a habit with him which had always annoyed her.  She shrank with a feeling amounting almost to terror from a dark, quiet room, and the position of nurse.  Her base of operations, according to her own arrangements, had been the light, airy kitchen, where she felt herself needed at this very moment.  But one can think of several things in a quarter of a minute.  Ester had very lately taken up the habit of securing one Bible verse as part of her armor to go with her through the day.  On this particular morning the verse was:  “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.”  Now if her hands had found work waiting for her down this first flight of stairs instead of down two, as she had planned, what was that to her?  Ester turned and went swiftly to the sick room, dispatched the almost frantic wife according to the doctor’s peremptory orders, gave the mixture as directed, waited patiently for the doctor’s return, only to hear herself installed as head nurse for the day; given just time enough to take a very hurried second table meal with Sadie, listen to her half pitiful, half comic complainings, and learn that her mother was down with sick headache.

So it was that this first day at home drew toward its closing; and not one single thing that Ester had planned to do, and do so well, had she been able to accomplish.  It had been very hard to sit patiently there and watch the low breathings of that almost motionless man on the bed before her, to rouse him at set intervals sufficiently to pour some mixture down his unwilling lips, to fan him occasionally, and that was all.  It had been hard, but Ester had not chafed under it; she had recognized the necessity—­no nurse to be found, her mother sick, and the young, frightened, as well as worn-out wife, not to be trusted.  Clearly she was at the post of duty.  So as the red sun peeped in a good-night from a little corner of the closed curtain, it found Ester not angry, but very sad. Such a weary day!  And this man on the bed was dying; both doctors had looked that at each other at least a dozen times that day.  How her life of late was being mixed up with death.  She had just passed through one sharp lesson, and here at the threshold awaited another.  Different from that last though—­oh, very different—­and herein lay some of the sadness.  Mr. Foster had said “every thing was ready for the long journey, even should there be no return.”  Then she went back for a minute to the look of glory on that marble face, and heard again that wonderful sentence:  “So he giveth his beloved sleep.”  But this man here! every thing had not been made ready by him.  So at least she feared.  Yet she was conscious, professed Christian though she had been,