Page:The Story of Hester Malpas.pdf/5

466 Even her glad temper sank at the bare idea of a separation from her parents. "Me, father!" exclaimed she; "oh! what will my mother say?" "No; as she always does to anything I propose," said her father. To this Hester made no reply. She had long felt silence was the only answer to such exclamations. For once, like her father, Hester dreaded to return home. "Is it possible," thought she, "we can be taking so much money home so slowly?" and she loitered even more than her father. Hester had yet to learn that no earthly advantage comes without its drawback. At length the silence was broken, and Hester listened with conviction, and a good fit of crying, to the many advantages her whole family were to derive from her adoption by her aunt. Still, "What will my mother say?" was the only answer she could give. When we expect the worst, it never happens. Mrs. Malpas caught at the idea of Hester's going to town with an eagerness which inflicted on poor Hester the severest pang she had ever known. "And is my mother so ready to part with me?" was a very bitter thought. Still, if she could have read that mother's heart, she would have been comforted. It was the excess of affection that made the sacrifice easy. All the belief in the sovereign power of a pretty face,—all the imagination which Mrs. Malpas had long ceased to exercise for herself,—were exerted for her daughter. Like all people who have lived their whole life in the country, she had the most unreal, the most magnificent ideas of London. Once there, and Hester's future fortune was certain. Besides, she had another reason, which, however, from the want of confidence which ran through the whole family, she kept to herself. There was a certain handsome youth, the son of a neighbouring farmer, between whom and Hester she thought the more distance the better. She had suffered too much from a love-match herself to entertain the least kindness towards such a step. The faults we ourselves commit are always those to which we are most unforgiving. Hester herself had never thought about what the feeling was which made her blush whenever she met Frank Horton. No girl ever does. It was shyness, not deception, that made her avoid even the mention of his name. The word love had never passed between them. Still the image of her early playmate was very frequent amid the regrets with which she regarded leaving her native place. The next day brought the second letter from Mrs. Hester Malpas. It contained the other half of the bank-note; and as it never seemed to have crossed the good lady's mind that there could be an objection to her proposed adoption, she had made every arrangement for her journey the following week. She had taken her place in the coach, stated her intention of meeting her at the inn, and hoped that she worked well at her needle. There was little preparation to be made. Her aunt had said, "that she could come with only the clothes on her back," and she was taken very nearly at her word. The evening before her departure, she went for a solitary walk, lingering amid all her old favourite haunts. Her spirits were worn out and dejected. It jarred cruelly upon her affectionate temper to find that her absence was matter of rejoicing to her whole family. The children, naturally enough, connected Hester's departure with the new indulgences, the result of their aunt's gift; and childhood is as selfish