"O Uncle Robert, you know we ought always to help people when they are in trouble—especially if they are hurt."
"Didn't you think you might get hurt too?"
Esther's face was rosy now, though he could not see it.
"I thought a great many silly things," she confessed softly. "I think I have been very silly and cowardly often, but I'm going to try not to be any more. I don't think I should mind going down into the cave again now."
"Tell me what you thought about it before," said Mr. Trelawny, in his imperious way; and though it was rather a hard command to obey, Esther thought it might, perhaps, amuse him to hear some of the things that she and the boys together had imagined about him, and perhaps he would tell her then how much of it all was true. So she told what Puck had said about the tanks where skeletons were pickled, and about the electric eye, and the elixir of life, and the different things that different persons had said, and the interpretation the boys had put upon their words, and how she had fancied that the groans she heard that day must proceed from some miserable captive destined for one of the tanks. It was rather hard to say all this, for some of it sounded quite silly now; but Esther bravely persevered, for she thought if she could once talk it right out she might never feel so frightened again.
Mr. Trelawny lay still, and she could not quite see the expression on his face, because it was partly covered up; but at last he seemed able to contain himself no longer, and he broke into a real laugh—not quite so loud or so gruff as usual, but very hearty for all that.
At the sound of that laugh Esther's fears seemed to take wing. It must all have been nonsense, she was sure. Nobody who had really been doing wicked and cruel things would laugh to know that they had been found out.
"I shall have to take you over my laboratory one of these days, and really show you my pickled skeletons, and my electric eye, and all the other mysteries. Now you need not shake, my dear. I have nothing in pickle worse than a specimen animal; and as for the electric eye, that is very far from being perfect, and it will be a long while before I can make you understand its use, or what we mean by the term. Anyhow, it is not an eye that we carry about with us. In your mind it would not be an eye at all, though it has some analogy to one. And as for the elixir of life, my dear, I would not drink of it if I were to find it. To live forever in this mortal world of ours would be a poor sort of thing; and we know that there is an elixir of life preparing for us, of which we shall all drink one day—all to whom it is given, that is. And then there will be new heavens and a new earth, and we shall all be glorified together."
Esther sat very still, trying to take in the magnitude of that idea, and feeling that she should never be afraid of Mr. Trelawny again, now that she had spoken so freely of her fears to him, and he had been so kind, and had said such nice things.
The shadows were beginning to fall now, and she was wondering how long she would have to stay here. She did not mean to leave Mr. Trelawny till Mr. Earle got back to take care of him; but she began to wish that he would come, and that she might get news of the boys.