A week or two before my arrival, Esther's daily governess (from all accounts a miserably weak and injudicious person) had been dismissed, having been found entirely incompetent to manage her young charge; and, till another should be procured, I had asked my aunt if I should not teach her for an hour or two every day. The offer had been very gladly accepted, and, somehow, after a week or two, all question of obtaining a new governess had died out, and Essie and her lessons had quietly devolved on me. I did not mind it very much; the child was good enough, and, with a little coaxing, got on tolerably well; but it was rather hard always to be tied down to that duty for the hours that I invariably felt most like reading or sewing, both of which occupations I found entirely incompatible with the due direction of Miss Esther's early mathematical efforts, and the proper supervision of her attempts at penmanship. I had the benefit of her society at other hours also; she kept pretty closely at my side during my leisure moments, favored by my vicinity to the nursery, and was my invariable companion in my walks: Grace never walked, except when ordered out under pain of her mother's displeasure, and Félicie was, of course, only too glad to shift the duty of exercising Miss Esther upon me. And as my aunt had a prejudice against full carriages, she and Josephine were generally considered a sufficient burden for the horses on Sunday, and Grace being commonly threatened with headache on that day, Esther and I were left to ourselves in the matter of church; and finding one not far distant, that had some free seats within its ample limits, we profited by the discovery, and pretty constantly filled two of them; Esther holding fast to my dress, never for a moment letting go of it through service or sermon; at times it seemed to me, as I caught her strange troubled eyes fixed on the rich colors of the chancel window, or the misty blue of the vaulted roof, that "her heart was envious of her eye," and she clung to me, uncertain and hesitating, as her one tie to earth. I never could quite make out the child; with all her pettishness, and very willful and trying naughtiness, there were moods and fancies about her that thoroughly puzzled me. The only way, I found, was to be as patient as possible with the one, and humor the other as far as was practicable.