have occurred to an older person to wonder how
William Pitt had got his name from parents who were both Tories. The
fact was that here, as in many another case, money was the solution of
the difficulty. A rich relation, who was also a radical, had promised a
fine legacy to the boy if he were given the name of the famous Whig
statesman, and Mr. Mrs. and Dallas had swallowed the pill per help of
the sugar. About this Esther knew nothing.

'Papa,' she said, 'don't you think Pitt will get so fond of England
that he will never want to come back?'

'It would not be strange if he did.'

'Is England so much better than America, papa?'

'It is England, my dear!' the colonel said, with an expression which
meant, she could not tell what.

CHAPTER XV.

_COMFORT_.

These letters, on the whole, did not comfort Esther. The momentary
intense pleasure was followed by inevitable dull reaction and contrast;
and before she had well got over the effect of one batch of letters
another came; and she was kept in a perpetual stir and conflict. For
Pitt proved himself a good correspondent, although it was June before
the first letter from his parents reached him. So he reported, writing
on the third of that month; and told that the Allied Sovereigns were
just then leaving Paris for a visit to the British Capital, and all the
London world was on tiptoe. 'Great luck for me to be here just now,' he
wrote; and so everybody at home agreed. Mrs. Dallas grew more stately,
Esther thought, with every visit she made at the colonel's house; and
she and her husband made many. It was a necessity to have some one to
speak to about Pitt and Pitt's letters; and it was urgent likewise that
Mrs. Dallas should know if letters had been received by the same mail
at this other house. She always found out, one way or another; and then
she would ask, 'May I see?' and scan with eager eyes the sheet the
colonel generally granted her. Of the letters to Esther nothing was
said, but Esther lived in fear and trembling that some inadvertent word
might let her know of their existence.

Another necessity which brought the Dallases often to Colonel
Gainsborough's was the political situation. They could hardly discuss
it with anybody else in Seaforth, and what is the use of a political
situation if you cannot discuss it? All the rest of the families in the
neighbourhood were strong Americans; and even Pitt, in his letters, was
more of an American than anything