"Peculiar!" repeats Esther, rather resentfully, raising her great eyes in unfeigned, displeased surprise to her companion's face. "Am I so very _odd-looking_, Mrs. Brandon? I don't think I can be, for no one ever told me so before!" "I did not say _odd-looking_, my dear," returns Mrs. Brandon, sharply; "please don't put words into my mouth." "If people came to buy cloaks, they would surely be thinking of how _they_ were looking, not how _I_ looked," says Esther, not yet quite recovered from her annoyed astonishment; "_my_ appearance, beyond the mere fact of my being tall, could not be of much consequence one way or another." Mrs. Brandon takes off and lays down her spectacles the better to point the rebuke she is about to administer. "Esther," she says, severely, "since you insist on my explaining myself more clearly, I must tell you that I think a girl should be steadier in conduct, and more decidedly imbued with religious principles than I have any reason for supposing you to be, before she is exposed to the temptations to which a young and handsome woman is liable in one of those sinks of iniquity, our great towns." Esther flings up her head with an angry gesture. "I really don't see what temptations a person even as unsteady and irreligious as I am," she says, contemptuously, "could be exposed to in a haberdasher's shop. Temptation, in a woman's mouth, always implies something about _men;_ and in a place specially devoted to woman's dress, one would be less likely to see them than in any other spot on the face of the earth." "If you are so much better informed on the subject than a person of _treble_ your years and experience," says Mrs. Brandon, resuming her spectacles, and beginning to knit faster than ever, "I have, of course, no more to say." An apposite retort rises prompt and saucy to Esther's lips, clamouring for egress through those sweet red gates; but the recollection of Mrs. Brandon's weak tea and legs of mutton, and the obligations thereto hanging, drives it back again. She leans her elbow on her knee, and elevates her straight dark brows. "The question is," she says, gravely, "can you suggest anything better? When one has no money, and none of the acquirements that command money, one must take what one can get, and be thankful." But Mrs. Brandon is silent, counting her stitches, buried in calculations as to whether her stocking-leg has attained the length and breadth suited to the dimensions of one of her son's large limbs. The wind shakes the shutter as if, in its lonely coldness outside, it coveted the fire and lamp-light. The old grey cat sits on the fender-stool beside Esther, yawning prodigiously every now and then; her round fore-paws gathered trimly under her, and the sleepy benignity of her face half-contradicting the fierce stiffness of her whiskers, and the tigerish upward curve of her lips.