with two or three birds, very well mounted. The birds, as the animals, were unknown to Esther, and fascinated her greatly. Books were in this room too, though not in large numbers; a flower press was in one place, a microscope on the table, a kind of étagère was loaded with papers; and there were boxes, and glasses, and cases; and a general air of a place where a good deal of business was done, and where a variety of tastes found at least attempted gratification. It was a pleasant room, though the description may not sound like it; the heterogeneous articles were in nice order; plenty of light blazed in at the windows, and the bearskin on the floor looked eminently comfortable. If that were luxurious, it was the only bit of luxury in the room.
'Where will you sit?' asked its owner, looking round. 'There isn't anything nice enough for you. I must look up a special chair for you to occupy when you come here. How do you like my room?'
'I like it – very much,' said Esther slowly, turning her eyes from one strange object to another.
'Nobody comes here but me, so we shall have no interruption to fear. When you come to see me, Queen Esther, you will just go straight through the house, out on the piazza, and up these stairs, with out asking anybody; and then you will turn the handle of the door and come in, without knocking. If I am here, well and good; if I am not here, wait for me. You like my deer's horns? I got them up in Canada, where I have been on hunting expeditions with my father.'
'Did you kill them?'
'Some of them. But that great elk head I bought.'
'What big bird is that?'
'That? That is the white-headed eagle – the American eagle.'
'Did that come from Canada too?'
'No; I shot him not far from here, one day, by great luck.'
'Are they difficult to shoot?'
'Rather. I sat half a day in a booth made with branches, to get the chance. There were several of them about that day, so I lay in wait. They are not very plenty just about here. That other fellow is the great European lammergeyer.'
Esther had placed herself on one of the hard wooden chairs, but now she rose and went nearer the birds, standing before them in great admiration. Slowly then she went from one thing in the room to another, pausing to contemplate each. A beautiful white owl, very large and admirably mounted, held her eyes for some time.
'That is the Great Northern Owl,' observed her companion. 'They are found far up in the regions around the North Pole, and only now and then come so far south as this.'
'What claws!' said Esther.
'Talons. Yes, they would carry off a rabbit very easily.'
'Do they!' cried Esther, horrified.
'I don't doubt that fellow has carried off many a one, as well as hosts of smaller fry – squirrels, mice, and birds.'
'He looks cruel,' observed Esther, with an abhorrent motion of her shoulders.
'He does, rather. But he is no more cruel than all the rest.'
'The rest of what?' said Esther, turning towards him.
'The rest of creation – all the carnivorous portion of it, I mean.'
'Are they all like that? they don't look so. The eyes of pigeons, for instance, are quite different.'
'Pigeons are not flesh-eaters.'
'Oh!' said Esther wonderingly. 'No, I know; they eat bread and grain; and canary birds eat seeds. Are there many birds that live on flesh?'
'A great many, Queen Esther. All creation, nearly, preys on some other part of creation – except that respectable number that are granivorous, and herbivorous, and graminivorous.'
Esther stood before the owl, musing; and Dallas, who was studying the child now, watched her.
'But what I want to know, is,' began Esther, as if she were carrying on an argument, 'why those that eat flesh look so much more wicked than the others that eat other things?'
'Do they?' said Dallas. 'That is the first question.'
'Why, yes,' said Esther, 'they do, Pitt. If you will think. There are sheep and cows and rabbits, and doves and chickens' —
'Halt there!' cried Dallas. 'Chickens are as good flesh-eaters as anybody, and as cruel about it, too. See two chickens pulling at the two ends of one earthworm.'
'Oh, don't!' said Esther. 'I remember they do; and they haven't nice eyes either, Pitt. But little turkeys have.'
Dallas burst out laughing.
'Well, just think,' Esther persisted. 'Think of horses' beautiful eyes; and then think of a tiger.'
'Or a cat,' said Dallas.
'But why is it, Pitt?'
'Queen Esther, my knowledge, such as it is, is all at your majesty's service; but the information required lies not therein.'
'Well, isn't it true, what I said?'
'I am inclined to think, and will frankly admit, that there is something in it.'
'Then don't you think there must be a real difference, to make them look so different? and that I wasn't wrong when I called the owl cruel!'
'The study of animal psychology, so far as I know, has never been carried into a system. Meanwhile, suppose we come from what I cannot teach, to what I can? Here's a Latin grammar for you.'
Esther came to his side immediately, and listened with grave attention to his explanations and directions.
'And you want me to learn these declensions?'
'It is a necessary preliminary to learning Latin.'
Esther took the book with a very awakened and contented face; then put a sudden irrelevant question. 'Pitt, why didn't you tell Mrs. Dallas what you were going to teach me?'
The young man looked at her, somewhat amused, but not immediately ready with an answer.
'Wouldn't she like you to give me lessons?'
'I never asked her,' he answered gravely.
Esther looked at him, inquiring and uncertain.
'I never asked her whether I might take lessons from your father, either.'
'No, of course not; but' —
'But what?'
'I don't know. I don't want to do it if she would not like it.'
'Why shouldn't she like it? She has nothing to do with it. It is I who am going to give you the lessons, not she. And now for a lesson in botany.'
He brought out a quantity of his dried flowers, beautifully preserved and arranged; and showed Esther one or two groups of plants, giving her various initiatory instruction by the way. It was a most delightful half hour to the little girl; and she went home after it, with her Latin grammar in her hands, very much aroused and wakened up and cheered from her dull condition of despondency; just what Pitt had intended.
CHAPTER V
CONTAMINATION
The lessons went on, and the interest on both sides knew no flagging. Dallas had begun by way of experiment, and he was quite contented with his success. In his room, over Latin and botany, at her own home, over history and the boxes of coins, he and Esther daily spent a good deal of time together. They were pleasant enough hours to him; but to her they were sources of life-giving nourishment and delight. The girl had been leading a forlorn existence; mentally in a desert and alone; and, added to that, with an unappeased longing for her departed mother, and silent, quiet, wearing grief for the loss of her. Even now, her features often settled into the dulness which had so struck Dallas; but gradually there was a lightening and lifting of the cloud: when studying she was wholly intent on her business, and when talking or reciting or examining flowers there was a play of life and thought and feeling in her face which was a constant study to her young teacher, as well as pleasure, for the change was his work. He read indications of strong capacity; he saw the tokens of rare sensitiveness and delicacy; he saw