_LEARNING_.
They had a most delightful walk. It was not quite the first they had
taken together; however, they had had none like this. They roved
through the meadows and over the low rocky heights and among the
copsewood, searching everywhere for flowers, and finding a good variety
of the dainty and delicate spring beauties. Columbine, most elegant,
stood in groups upon the rocks; _Hepatica_ hid under beds of dead
leaves; the slender _Uvularia_ was met with here and there; anemone and
bloodroot and wild geranium, and many another. And as they were
gathered, Dallas made Esther observe their various features and family
characteristics, and brought her away from Christopher's technical
phraseology to introduce her instead to the living and everlasting
relations of things. To this teaching the little girl presently lent a
very delighted ear, and brought, he could see, a quick wit and a keen
power of discrimination. It was one thing to call a delicate little
plant arbitrarily _Sanguinaria canadensis;_ it was another thing to
find it its place among the floral tribes, and recognise its kindred
and associations and family character.
On their way home, Dallas proposed that Esther should stop at his house
for a minute, and become a little familiar with the place where she was
to come to study Latin; and he led her in as he spoke.
The Dallases' house was the best in the village. Not handsome in its
exterior, which bore the same plain and somewhat clumsy character as
all the other buildings in its neighbourhood; but inside it was
spacious, and had a certain homely elegance. Rooms were large and
exceedingly comfortable, and furnished evidently with everything
desired by the hearts of its possessors. That fact has perhaps more to
do with the pleasant, _liveable_ air of a house than aesthetic tastes
or artistic combinations apart from it. There was a roomy verandah,
with settees and cane chairs, and roses climbing up the pillars and
draping the balustrade. The hall, which was entered next, was wide and
homelike, furnished with settees also, and one or two tables, for
summer occupation, when doors could be set open front and back and the
wind play through. Nobody was there to-day, and Dallas turned to a door
at the right and opened it. This let them into a large room where a
fire was burning, and a soft genial warmth met them, along with a
certain odour, which Esther noticed and felt without knowing what it
was. It was very faint, yet unmistakeable; and was a compound probably
made up from the old wood of the house, burning coals in the chimney,
great cleanliness, and a distant, hidden, secret store of all manner of
delicate good things, fruits and sweets and spices, of which Mrs.
Dallas's store closet held undoubtedly a great stock and variety. The
brass of the old-fashioned grate glittered in the sunlight, it was so
beautifully kept; between the windows hung a circular mirror, to the
frame of which were appended a number of spiral, slim, curling
branches, like vine tendrils, each sustaining a socket for a candle.
The rest of the furniture was good; dark and old and comfortable;
painted vases were on the mantelpiece, and an old portrait hung over
it. The place made a peculiar agreeable impression upon any one
entering it; ease and comfort and good living were so at home in it,
and so invited one to take part in its advantages. Esther had hardly
been in the house since the death of her mother, and it struck her
almost as a stranger. So did the lady sitting there, in state, as it
seemed to the girl.
For Mrs. Dallas was a stately person. Handsome, tall, of somewhat large
and full figure and very upright carriage; handsomely dressed; and with
a calm, superior air of confidence, which perhaps had more effect than
all the other good properties mentioned. She was sitting in an
easy-chair, with some work in her hands, by a little work-table on
which lay one or two handsomely bound books. She looked up and reviewed
Esther as her son and she came in.
'I have brought Esther Gainsborough, mother; you know her, don't you?'
'I know her, certainly,' Mrs. Dallas answered, holding out her hand to
the child, who touched it as somewhat embodying a condescension rather
than a kindness. 'How is your father, my dear?'
'He does not feel very well,' said Esther; 'but he never does.'
'Pity!' said the lady; but Esther could not tell what she meant. It was
a pity, of course, that her father did not feel well. 'Where have you
been all this while?' the lady went on, addressing her son.
'Where?--well, in reality, walking over half the country. See our
flowers! In imagination, over half the world. Do you know what a
collection of coins Colonel Gainsborough has?'
'No,' said the lady coldly.
'He has a very fine collection.'
'I see no good in coins that are not current.'
'Difference of opinion, you see, there, mother. An old piece, which
when it was current was worth only perhaps a farthing or two, now when
its currency is long past would sell maybe for fifty or a hundred
pounds.'
'That is very absurd, Pitt!'
'Not altogether.'
'Why not?'
'Those old coins are history.'
'You don't want them for history. You have the history in books.'
Pitt laughed.
'Come away, Esther,' he said. 'Come and let me show you where you are
to find me when you want me.'
'Find you for what?' asked the lady, before they could quit the room.
'Esther is coming to take lessons from me,' he said, throwing his head
back laughingly as he went.
'Lessons! In what?'
'Anything she wants to learn, that I can teach her. We have been
studying history and botany to-day. Come along, Esther. We shall not
take our lessons _here_.'
He led the way, going out into the hall and at the further end of it
passing into a verandah which there too extended along the back of the
house. The house on this side had a long offset, or wing, running back
at right angles with the main building. The verandah also made an angle
and followed the side of this wing, which on the ground floor contained
the kitchen and offices. Half way of its length a stairway ran up, on
the outside, to a door nearer the end of the building. Up this stair
young Dallas went, and introduced Esther to a large room, which seemed
to her presently the oddest and also the most interesting that she had
ever in her life seen. Its owner had got together, apparently, the old
bits of furniture that his mother did not want any longer; there was an
old table, devoid of all varnish, in the floor, covered, however, with
a nice green cloth; two or three chairs were the table's
contemporaries, to judge by their style, and nothing harder or less
accommodating to the love of ease ever entered surely a cabinetmaker's
brain. The wood of which they were made had, however, come to be of a
soft brown colour, through the influence of time, and the form was not
inelegant. The floor was bare and painted, and upon it lay here an old
rug and there a great thick bearskin; and on the walls there were
several heads of animals, which seemed to Esther very remarkable and
extremely ornamental. One beautiful deer's head, with elegant horns;
and one elk head, the horns of which in their sweep and extent were
simply enormous; then there were one or two fox heads, and a raccoon;
and besides all these, the room was adorned 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.