"Come, you're not so bad," said Esther with her pleasant cordial candour. "Now I'm quite insignificant."
"No, you're not. You've got the grand manner. I heard Godfrey say so."
Esther laughed both at the compliment and at the authority vouched in support of it.
"Oliver Wyse was at lunch too on the occasion, was he? How is he getting on?"
"Sir Oliver is still his usual agreeable, composed, competent, and, I'm inclined to think, very wilful self."
"Patient, though?" The question came with a mischievous glance. Judith's retort was ironic, both with eyes and tongue.
"I permit myself any amount of comment on character but no conjecture as to facts. That's the distinction between studying human nature and gossiping, Esther."
"Don't snub me! And the distinction's rather a fine one."
"No, gossip's all right for you, living outside the house. I live so much inside it that I think it wouldn't be fair in me. And above all, owing to the footing on which I'm there—as I've told you—I am emphatically not a watch-dog."
"Where's the child?"