chard
Carstone. These two, who were cousins, were left orphans. The master of
Bleak House, therefore, in the goodness of his heart, offered them a
home with him, and this they thankfully accepted. Mr. Jarndyce now
wished to find a companion for Ada Clare; and this is how Esther
Summerson comes into this story.

Esther was a sweet girl who had been brought up by a stern, hard-hearted
woman whom she had always called "godmother," in ignorance of her
parentage. She had never known who were her mother or father, for from
earliest babyhood her godmother had forbidden her to ask questions
concerning them, and she would have had a sad and lonely youth but for
her sunny disposition.

It was not till her godmother died suddenly that she found she had a
guardian, and that he was Mr. Jarndyce of Bleak House. How he came to
be her guardian was a mystery to her, but she was glad to find herself
not altogether friendless. Although he had taken the pains to see her
more than once, and had noticed with pleasure what a cheerful, loving
nature she had, yet Esther had never, so far as she knew, seen him, so
that she received his invitation to come and live at Bleak House with
joyful surprise.

She went, on the day appointed, to London, and there she met Ada, whom
she began to love at once, and Richard, a handsome, careless young
fellow of nineteen. They spent the day together and got well acquainted
before they took the morrow's coach to Bleak House.

At the Chancery Court they met poor, crazy little Miss Flite, who
insisted on taking them to her room above the rag-and-bottle shop to
show them her caged birds. And that night (as they had been directed)
they stayed at the house of a Mrs. Jellyby, of whom Mr. Jarndyce had
heard as a woman of great charity.

Mrs. Jellyby was a woman with a mission, which mission was the education
of the natives of Borrioboola-Gha, in Africa, and the cultivation there
of the coffee-bean. She thought of nothing else, and was for ever
sending out letters or pamphlets about it.

But she seemed unable to see or think of anything nearer home than
Africa. The house was unswept, the children dirty and always under
foot, and the meals half-cooked. She would sit all day in slipshod
slippers and a dress that did not meet in the back, drinking coffee and
dictating to her eldest daughter Caddy (who hated Africa and all its
natives) letters about coffee cultivation and the uplifting of the
natives of Borrioboola-G