ESTHER'S WAY

New Zealand Tablet, 13 August 1908, Page 37

ESTHER'S WAY

Everyone was full of sympathy for the Fuller twins when their mother was taken ill. The , door-bell rang so often that either Janey or Bess had to be on duty most of the time to answer it and give the' latest report from the sick-room. Mary, the maid-of-all-work, had no time for answering the bell, for sickness in the house made a great deal of extra work, and Mary declared that sh<jr was never finished ; she only stopped when she was too tired to do any more.

Claribel Hughes was especially sorry Jor Janey and Bess, who were two of her most intimate friends.

'They're so worried, poor 'dears !' she told herself. ' I'm going in as often as I can and cheer them up.'

As a matter of fad, she went nearly every day, and stayed anywHere from one hour to three, chattering gaily of her various good times. The girls sometimes gave abstracted answers. Claribel took it for granted that this was because they w.ere so anxious about their motherjK. .-,

But when Esther Corrigan came she slipped in at the back, door, and glided noiselessly as a shadow. Bess found her one afternoon when one of Claribel's long visits had come to an end, in the little sewing-room upstairs, darning away for dear life.

'Stockings will wear out, even when there's _sickn ess in the house,' she remarked, smiling up at Bess. ' Inconsiderate of them, isn't it? By the way, I woke up in the night, and the light in your room was burning.'

'We didn't get through with- our work, till very Into,' Bess admitted. ' I doir't know why we are so slow.'

And then the bell rang, and she hurried clown to receive another caller, who wanted to know just how .her- mother was, and to tell a long story of illness in her own home the previous winter.

Some of Claribel's friends were enthusiastic over her 'devotion to the Fuller girls. ' She's -been there nearly every day,' they' said. ' Wasn't it sweet of her? It must have done them so much good. Claribel is so bright and full of fun.'

As for the backstairs visitor who had done the darning t-i>d the dusting and had slipped -away without asking anyone to entertain her, no one "thought of her -at all". No one, that is • to say, except the Fuller girls. . - ~