She adored her father. His society was her sunshine, and since he had become John Nolan, Esther's days had been very cloudy. He was always away from home. There was only one little patch of the morning of Saturday, the Sabbath, which Esther could call her own, and even that was broken into by the service at the Synagogue, when he sat upon one side of the aisle, magnificent in black broadcloth and silk hat, and she sat upon the other side among the maids and matrons. In the afternoon he was at work again. She was in my Lady's drawing-room, or marketing with Mrs. Moriarty.
"You're to bide by yourself or along with me," Mrs. Moriarty had often admonished her. "You're to bide by yourself till your auntie comes."
And always to Esther's eager question, "When is she coming?" Mrs. Moriarty's cryptic answer had been, "God knows."
But when she understood that the gloom of the drawing-room had forced Esther into the writing of unsuspected letters, she deemed it wise to go further in enlightenment.
"You're to say naught of this to your poor father. But I'll tell you the meaning of his trouble. Your auntie is lost, my dear."
"Ay, lost in this cruel hard city. Lost among strangers in her sorrow. She was comin' over to live with the two of ye. I'll never forget the night your father got her letter sayin' she was comin', and for him to meet her at Ellis Island. I went in an' found him sitting with it in his hand, with the look of death on his face. For the letter was two months old when he got it. Some mistake about his two names there was, and the date she set down for him to meet her was six weeks gone when her letter came. Glory be to God, but it's a cruel world! An' her husband just dead on her, and her so lonely, the creature! If she was poor itself we'd have a better chance of finding her, through some of the charities or the hospitals, maybe. But she had money enough to last her a while, and she's gone the same as if the ground had swallied her up."
"Mine papa," commented Esther, "he's got it pretty hard," and she folded her hands in her lap and shook her head in unconscious but triumphant imitation of Mrs. Moriarty.
"Hear you me," Mrs. Moriarty acquiesced. "He has the hardest luck ever I heard of. His sister's husband's name was Cohen, and her Christian name"--Esther looked puzzled, and Mrs. Moriarty politely substituted--"her _first_ name was Esther, the same as yours. And when your poor distracted father went to find out did e'er an Esther Cohen land the day she mentioned in the letter, they told him that twenty-five did, and for him to go away with his jokes. You know the world is full of Cohens."