ctory. From time to time, as she reached new
altitudes in the course of study, the teacher's name on these tickets
varied. But the tickets were the only link between Esther's two lives of
home and school. No reproachful teacher, no truant officer threatening
arrest and the Juvenile Court, ever darkened her horizon. No outraged
Principal ever summoned her father to an uncomfortable quarter of an
hour. She was, as successive teachers noted with amazement, that rara
avis in the human family, a normal child. Even her clear dark eyes and
her dainty little features were as her ancestry decreed that they should
be. And the clear pallor of her skin--which Mrs. Moriarty tried to
combat by dressing her much in red--was the normal accompaniment to the
fine soft blackness of her hair.

She adored her father. His society was her sunshine, and since he had
become John Nolan, Esther's days had been very cloudy. He was always
away from home. There was only one little patch of the morning of
Saturday, the Sabbath, which Esther could call her own, and even that
was broken into by the service at the Synagogue, when he sat upon one
side of the aisle, magnificent in black broadcloth and silk hat, and she
sat upon the other side among the maids and matrons. In the afternoon he
was at work again. She was in my Lady's drawing-room, or marketing with
Mrs. Moriarty.

"You're to bide by yourself or along with me," Mrs. Moriarty had often
admonished her. "You're to bide by yourself till your auntie comes."

And always to Esther's eager question, "When is she coming?" Mrs.
Moriarty's cryptic answer had been, "God knows."

But when she understood that the gloom of the drawing-room had forced
Esther into the writing of unsuspected letters, she deemed it wise to go
further in enlightenment.

"You're to say naught of this to your poor father. But I'll tell you the
meaning of his trouble. Your auntie is lost, my dear."

"Lost!" cried Esther.

"Ay, lost in this cruel hard city. Lost among strangers in her sorrow.
She was comin' over to live with the two of ye. I'll never forget the
night your father got her letter sayin' she was comin', and for him to
meet her at Ellis Island. I went in an' found him sitting with it in
his hand, with the look of death on his face. For the letter was two
months old when he got it. Some mistake about his two names there was,
and the date she set down for him to meet her was six weeks gone when
her letter came. Glor