at rare intervals in one particular light; and with cheeks and nose and chin and throat all as brown as any berry that ever ripened under the mellow autumn sun.
"It's a fault on the right side, dear boy; it's better than quivering and being purple," says Esther, with a pout which a lover would have thought entrancing, but which a prosaic brother, if he perceived it at all, considered rather a distortion than otherwise.
"I wish that people would remember that there is a time to call and a time to dine, and that the two times are not the same," he grumbles, a little crossly.
A man may bear the untimely cutting off of his firstborn, the disposition evinced by the wife of his bosom to love his neighbour as himself, the sinking of his little all in the Agra Bank, with resignation and fortitude truly Christian; but what hero, what sage, what archbishop, can stand the over-roasting or under-boiling of his mutton, the burning of his soup, or the wateriness of his potatoes, and bear an æquam mentem?
Esther looks rather conscious, purses up her pink mouth into the shape of a noiseless "Hush!" and says "Pas avant," which idiomatic phrase is intended to convey to her brother the indiscreetness of making comments in Sarah's presence on Mr. Brandon's enormities.
From long familiarity with the sound, Sarah has become entirely acquainted with Esther's specimen of Parisian French, and always pricks up her ears when it appears on the scene.
Then they are silent for a little space. One is not apt to say very brilliant things in one's family circle; it requires the friction of mind with mind before bright sayings spring into being, as the flint and the steel must be married before the spark leaps into life.
"How long the days are now!" Jack says presently, as he looks out on the evening light lying like a great bright cloak all over the land.
The earth is so very fair, all pranked with "smalle flowres" and green leaves, that the sun is grievously loth to leave her. Fair-weather friend as he is, he cannot be in too great a hurry to desert her, when she lies poor and bare and faded in the dull November days.
"One always says that this time of year," Esther says, smiling. "It would be much more worthy remark if they didn't get longer; if one kept a journal of one's remarks for a year, what an awful tautology there would be in them! What a pity that one cannot say a thing once for all, and have done with it!"
"If you resolved never to say anything that anybody had said before, you would make mighty few observations, I take it," Jack answers, a little drily. "Most remarks have been pretty well aired in the course of the last six thousand years, I fancy."
So, with a little flagging talk, the dinner passes, and the modest dessert appears: scarlet pyramids of strawberries, great bag-shaped British Queens, and little racy, queer-tasted hautbois.
Sarah retires, and the embargo is taken off Esther's speech.
"Is she gone—finally gone?" she cries, very eagerly. "Heaven be praised for that! I thought she would never have done clattering those spoons. Oh, Jack, what a heavy weight a piece of news is to carry! How I sympathise with the woman who had to whisper to the rushes about Midas' ears! I have been dying all through dinner for some rushes to whisper to."
"To whisper what to?" asks the boy, his eyes opening very wide and round.
"Jack, do I look taller than usual to-night?"
"No."
"Broader?"
"Not that I perceive."
"More consequential?"
"Much as usual. You never are a woman with 'a presence.'"
"Is it possible that there's no difference at all in me?"
"None whatever; except that, now I look at you, your cheeks are, if possible, redder than usual. Why should there be any?"
"Because" (drawing herself up) "I have to-day passed a turning-point in my history. I have had—a proposal."
"Who from?—one of the haymakers?"
"No. That would not have surprised me much more, though. Let me get it out as quick as I can, now that the string of my tongue is loosed. Robert Brandon was here to-day."
"As I know to my cost," says Jack, with rather a rueful face at the recollection of his unpalatable dinner.
"And—and—how shall I word it prettiest?—asked me to be his."
"The devil he did!" exclaims Jack, surprised into strong, language.
"Yes, the devil he did! as you epigrammatically remark."
"And you, what answer did you give?" asks the boy, quickly, his mouth emulating the example of his eyes, and opening wide, too.
"I said I was much obliged, but that, for the present, I preferred being my own."
"You said 'No,' of course?"
"Yes, I did; ever so many 'Noes.' I did not count them, but I'm sure their name was Legion."
Jack gives a sigh of relief, and throws a biscuit to the ceaselessly attent sheep-dog. "Poor beggar!" he says. "Here, Luath, old man. You old muff! why did you not catch it? He is as good a fellow as ever I came across, and now, I suppose, it will be all different and disagreeable. Hang it! what a plague women are!"
"But, Jack——"
"Well, Essie, not done yet? Any more unlucky fellows sent off with their tails between their legs?"
"No, no; but, Jack" (looking down, and staining her fingers with the henna of the strawberries), "I—I'm not quite sure that, after all those 'Noes,' I did not say something that was not quite 'No.'"
"That was 'Yes?'"
"No, not 'Yes' either; not positive, actual 'Yes;' something betwixt and between; a sort of possible, hypothetical 'Yes.'"
"More fool you!" said Jack, briefly.
"Don't scold me, you bad boy!" she cries, running over to him and putting her gentle arms about his neck in the caressing way which sisters affect so much, and which brothers, in general, disrelish so highly, "or I vow I'll cry, and you know you hate that."
"I hate your making a fool of yourself worse," growls Jack, mollified, but struggling. "I say, you need not strangle a fellow."
"Wait till I do make a fool of myself," she says, very gaily. "I'm only talking about it as yet, and there's a good wide ditch between saying and doing."
"More shame for you to say what you don't mean."
"Jack, dear boy, don't you know that I hate saying things that vex a person? I never had a faculty for telling people home-truths; I'd far sooner tell them any amount of stories; and I got so tired of saying 'No,' and he seemed to take it so much to heart, that I said 'Yes,' just for a change—just for peace. In fact, 'anything for a quiet life' is my motto."
"And may I ask what you intend to live upon?" asks Jack (the romantic side of whose mind lies at present fallow and uncultivated, and whose thoughts, Briton-like, speedily
