"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?"
"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."
"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.