ardly endure to stay in it.
If the others could have had their way, they would have had all their
meals out there, but not so Esther; the sight of the poor neglected spot
would have quite destroyed her appetite, though no one loved having meals
out-of-doors better than she did. She often took the children to tea in
the woods, but _that_ was different; the woods were always lovely, and
just what they should be.

Esther's earlier years had given her a brief experience of how things
should be done, and how they should look, and she had never forgotten;
Penelope, on the other hand, had forgotten, or never noticed Angela and
Poppy, fired by Esther's example, had spasmodic passions for improving the
house or garden, during which every one suffered more or less, and they
themselves were exhausted long before the huge tasks they had undertaken
were half completed.

So here and there the garden showed cleared and scarred patches where the
children had 'worked,' which meant that they had begun to 'tidy' by
pulling up everything that grew, after which they would scrape the bed
over with a rake and replace in a prim row as many of the plants as they
could get in, and a day or two later the eye would be caught by a square
of brown earth, broken by a row of sorry-looking dead or dying plants
standing conspicuous and solitary against the wild, untrained vegetation
round about, while a later search would perhaps reveal, under the tangled
litter in the path, one of the best dinner-knives, covered with rust, and
other lost treasures, such as a trowel, scissors, and occasionally a
silver fork.

To Esther these attempts were merely depressing and irritating; they
seemed only to emphasise their helplessness, and the uselessness of trying
to make things better.

"Nothing is right here, somehow," she complained to Penelope now,
"neither the house, nor the garden, nor ourselves. Look at us!" throwing
out her hands dramatically. "We aren't educated, or dressed properly,
or--or anything. Look at that," stretching out her foot, and eyeing
disdainfully the clumsy shoe which disfigured it. "We aren't fit to go
anywhere, and we can't ask any one here because the house is never fit to
be seen, or the meals, or--"

"Never mind," said Penelope placidly. She was used to Esther's outbursts,
but, though quite unable to sympathise, she was ready with attempts at
comfort. "You don't want to know any one but ourselves, do you?
I don't."

"No-o