“Don’t!” he burst out; “I’m on the verge of distraction already! I can’t bear it!”
“Is there anything the matter? You’re not in a scrape? You don’t want Jock?” she said.
“No, no—only I’ve done it. Babie, I shall go mad, if I don’t get an answer soon.”
Babie was much too sharp not to see what he meant. She knew in a kind of intuitive, undeveloped way how things stood with Bobus, and this gave a certain seriousness to her manner of saying—
“Essie?”
“Of course, the darling! If your mother would only come and tell me,—but she was frightened, and won’t say anything. If she won’t, I’m the most miserable fellow in the world.”
“How stupid you must have been!” said Babie. “That comes of you, neither of you, ever reading. You couldn’t have done it right, Cecil.”
“Do you really think so?” he asked, in such piteous, earnest tones that he touched her heart.
“Dear Cecil,” she said, “it will be all right. I know Essie likes you better than any one else.”
She had almost added “though she is an ungrateful little puss for doing so,” but before the words had time to come out of her mouth, Cecil had flown at her in a transport, thrown his arms round her and kissed her, just as her mother opened the door, and uttered an odd incoherent cry of amazement.