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quickened when my affection is. My disposition is very af-
fectionate, and perhaps I might still feel such a wound if
such a wound could be received more than once with the
quickness of that birthday.
Dinner was over, and my godmother and I were sitting
at the table before the fire. The clock ticked, the fire clicked;
not another sound had been heard in the room or in the
house for I don’t know how long. I happened to look tim-
idly up from my stitching, across the table at my godmother,
and I saw in her face, looking gloomily at me, ‘It would have
been far better, little Esther, that you had had no birthday,
that you had never been born!’
I broke out crying and sobbing, and I said, ‘Oh, dear
godmother, tell me, pray do tell me, did Mama die on my
birthday?’
‘No,’ she returned. ‘Ask me no more, child!’
‘Oh, do pray tell me something of her. Do now, at last,
dear godmother, if you please! What did I do to her? How
did I lose her? Why am I so different from other children,
and why is it my fault, dear godmother? No, no, no, don’t go
away. Oh, speak to me!’
I was in a kind of fright beyond my grief, and I caught
hold of her dress and was kneeling to her. She had been say-
ing all the while, ‘Let me go!’ But now she stood still.
Her darkened face had such power over me that it
stopped me in the midst of my vehemence. I put up my
trembling little hand to clasp hers or to beg her pardon with
what earnestness I might, but withdrew it as she looked at
me, and laid it on my fluttering heart. She raised me, sat in

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