we're heroes and we're pioneers, and we're beggars and we're choosers
24th March, 1890 — Ester’s rooms
Judah Holt / Roberto Devine
She had been supposed to meet with some up-and-coming virtuoso of a theatre director today; he had been going to fawn over her for hours; to dine with her; to engage her in a play. But she had arrived only to be told by his assistant that something more important had come up, and they hadn’t had her name down anyway.
It would be perfectly well of her to be offended by that - even though she had no reputation yet as an actress and a worrisome reputation otherwise - but Ester could make the most of moping, if she liked, and so, skirting through the streets until she found Judah playing at a usual haunt, she had listened to him play for a while and then badgered him into coming back to hers to keep her company.
Besides, he was a dear young thing and deserved to be well-looked after by someone, even if it were not his ungrateful family. He felt almost like a son to her. Strange, that she should so want to mother somebody when she had made so dreadful a mother before. So she had laid out a fine supper for them both, though they were settled on cushions on her bedroom floorboards rather than at the table, because Ester found the dining-room corner of her flat’s squashed sitting room rather too dreary for words. The evening light came through the window on this side of the building, and she felt much like she had as a girl, building fairy-princess forts with her bedsheets.
“Now if only life were good to us, Judah, you would be playing every night at the concert halls,” Ester declaimed grandly, offering him some more cheese, “and I would be on the stage.”
It would be perfectly well of her to be offended by that - even though she had no reputation yet as an actress and a worrisome reputation otherwise - but Ester could make the most of moping, if she liked, and so, skirting through the streets until she found Judah playing at a usual haunt, she had listened to him play for a while and then badgered him into coming back to hers to keep her company.
Besides, he was a dear young thing and deserved to be well-looked after by someone, even if it were not his ungrateful family. He felt almost like a son to her. Strange, that she should so want to mother somebody when she had made so dreadful a mother before. So she had laid out a fine supper for them both, though they were settled on cushions on her bedroom floorboards rather than at the table, because Ester found the dining-room corner of her flat’s squashed sitting room rather too dreary for words. The evening light came through the window on this side of the building, and she felt much like she had as a girl, building fairy-princess forts with her bedsheets.
“Now if only life were good to us, Judah, you would be playing every night at the concert halls,” Ester declaimed grandly, offering him some more cheese, “and I would be on the stage.”
![[Image: uWJZ5yA.png]](https://i.imgur.com/uWJZ5yA.png)