'Will you?' she said, lifting her eyes to him with a gleam of sudden hope.
'Certainly! I shall give you lessons just as usual whenever I come home; indeed, I expect I shall do it all your life. I think I shall always be teaching and you always be learning. Don't you think that is how it will be, Queen Esther?' he said kindly.
'You cannot give me lessons when you are away.'
There was a very faint yet distinct lightening of the gloom in her face. Yet it was plain Esther was not cheated out of her perception of the truth. She was going to lose her friend; and his absence would be very different from his presence; and the bits of vacation time would not help, or help only by anticipation, the long stretches of months in which there would be neither sight nor sound of him. Esther's looks had brightened for a moment, but then her countenance fell again and her face grew visibly pale. Pitt saw it with dismay.
'But Esther!' he said, 'this is nothing. Every man must go to college, you know, just as he must learn swimming and boating; and so I must go; but it will not last for ever.'
'How long?' said she, lifting her eyes to him again, heavy with their burden of sorrow.
'Well, perhaps three years; unless I enter Junior, and then it would be only two. That isn't much.'
'Then? I don't know. Look after you, at any rate. Let us see. How old will you be in two years?'
'Fourteen. Well, you see you will have a great deal to do before you can afford to be fourteen years old; so much that you will not have time to miss me.'
'I'll be back at Christmas anyhow, you know; and that's only three months away, or a little more.'
'Never mind; we will make a little do the work of a great deal. It will seem a long time, it will be so good.'
'No,' said Esther; 'that will make it only the shorter.'
'Why, Esther,' said he, half laughing, 'I didn't know you cared so much about me. I don't deserve all that.'
'I am not crying,' said the girl, rising with a sort of childish dignity; 'but I shall be alone.'
They had been sitting on a rock, resting and talking, and now set out again to go home. Esther spoke no more; and Pitt was silent, not knowing what to say; but he watched her, and saw that if she had not been crying at the time she had made that declaration, the tears had taken their revenge and were coming now. Yet only in a calm, repressed way; now and then he saw a drop fall, or caught a motion of Esther's hand which could only have been made to prevent a drop from falling. She walked along steadily, turning neither to the right hand nor the left; she who ordinarily watched every hedgerow and ran to explore every group of plants in the corner of a field, and was keen to see everything that was to be seen in earth or heaven. Pitt walked along silently too. He was at a careless age, but he was a generous-minded fellow; and to a mind of that sort there is something exceedingly attractive and an influence exceedingly powerful in the fact of being trusted and depended on.