Two days after a cab stood in the yard in front of the kitchen window. Peggy's luggage was being piled upon it--two large, handsome basket boxes with the initials painted on them. Kneeling on the box-seat, the coachman leaned over the roof making room for another--a small box covered with red cowhide and tied with a rough rope. The little box in its poor simplicity brought William back to Esther, whelming her for a moment in so acute a sense of her loss that she had to leave the kitchen. She went into the scullery, drew the door after her, sat down, and hid her face in her apron. A stifled sob or two, and then she recovered her habitual gravity of expression, and continued her work as if nothing had happened. XII "They are just crazy about it upstairs. Ginger and the Gaffer are the worst. They say they had better sell the place and build another house somewhere else. None of the county people will call on them now--and just as they were beginning to get on so well! Miss Mary, too, is terrible cut up about it; she says it will interfere with her prospects, and that Ginger has nothing to do now but to marry the kitchen-maid to complete the ruin of the Barfields." "Miss Mary is far too kind to say anything to wound another's feelings. It is only a nasty old deceitful thing like yourself who could think of such a thing." "Eh, you got it there, my lady," said Sarah, who had had a difference with Grover, and was anxious to avenge it. Grover looked at Sarah in astonishment, and her look clearly said, "Is everyone going to side with that little kitchen-maid?" Then, to flatter Mrs. Latch, Sarah spoke of the position the Latches had held three generations ago; the Barfields were then nobodies; they had nothing even now but their money, and that had come out of a livery stable. "And it shows, too; just compare Ginger with young Preston or young Northcote. Anyone could tell the difference." Esther listened with an unmoved face and a heavy ache in her heart. She had now not an enemy nor yet an opponent; the cause of rivalry and jealousy being removed, all were sorry for her. They recognised that she had suffered and was suffering, and seeing none but friends about her, she was led to think how happy she might have been in this beautiful house if it had not been for William. She loved her work, for she was working for those she loved. She could imagine no life happier than hers might have been. But she had sinned, and the Lord had punished her for sin, and she must bear her punishment uncomplainingly, giving Him thanks that He had imposed no heavier one upon her. Such reflection was the substance of Esther's mind for three months after William's departure; and in the afternoons, about three o'clock, when her work paused, Esther's thoughts would congregate and settle on the great misfortune of her life--William's desertion.