'Why do you do that? Where is Barker?' her father demanded at last. 'Barker has been exceedingly busy all day, putting down carpets and arranging her storeroom. I am sure she is tired.' 'I suppose you are tired too, are you not?' 'Yes, papa.' He said no more, however, and Esther finished her work, and then sat down on a cushion at the corner of the fireplace, in one of those moods belonging to tired mind and body, in which one does not seem at the moment to care any longer about anything. The lively, blazing coal fire shone on a warm, cosy little room, and on two somewhat despondent figures. For his supper had not brightened the colonel up a bit. He sat brooding. Perhaps his thoughts took the road that Esther's had often followed lately, for he suddenly came out with a name now rarely spoken between them. 'It is a long while that we have heard nothing from the Dallases!' 'Yes,' Esther said apathetically. 'Mr. Dallas used to write to me now and then.' 'They are busy with their own concerns, and we are out of sight; why should they remember us?' 'They used to be good neighbours, in Seaforth.' 'Pitt. Papa, I do not think his father and mother were ever specially fond of us.' 'Pitt never writes to me now,' the colonel went on, after a pause. 'He is busy with _his_ concerns. He has forgotten us too. I suppose he has plenty of other things to think of. Oh, I have given up Pitt long ago.' The colonel brooded over his thoughts a while, then raised his head and looked again over the small room. 'My dear, it would have been better to stay where we were,' he said regretfully.