"He will very likely be up again to-morrow. He does not like stopping there, I can tell you," said Mr. Earle, "but there is nothing that makes people feel so helpless as not being able to see. But for that he would never be so quiet."
"Would he like some blackberries?" asked Puck, opening the basket and looking in. "Let's pick out some of the very best for him, and you tell him we gathered them for him, and hope he'll like them."
So Mr. Earle departed presently with the pick of the spoil, and the children sat and talked about Mr. Trelawny, thinking how sad it was for him to be half blind and not able to do anything, and wondering if they could do anything to cheer him up.
"Children can't do things for grown-ups," said Milly, rather disconsolately. "It's only grown-ups who do things for children. But you did something for Mr. Trelawny, Essie, when you got him out of the cave. I should like to have done that. You saved his life, didn't you?"
"Yes!" cried Pickle; but Esther said,—
"No—at least I mean it wasn't really like that. I went and told the servants, and they got him out."
"But if you hadn't gone in when he called, if you'd run away as some silly people would have done, he'd have been a deader as sure as a gun," chimed in Pickle eagerly. "Mr. Earle said so his very self."
This act of Esther's was very interesting to all the children, and certainly she found that all her old fears of Mr. Trelawny had vanished away.
The very next day she was admitted to his darkened room, where he was lying on a couch with a bandage over his eyes, and his hand and arm bound up too. She sat beside him quite a long time, telling him all about her own adventure that day, about what had befallen the boys on the same afternoon, and about their doings these last days—how they had been often up in the woods getting nuts and blackberries, and how they were enjoying their holiday.
Esther found that Mr. Trelawny was a very nice person to talk to, although his voice was still rather loud, and he had a quick, imperious way of asking a question which sometimes made her jump. But he was always interested in what she said. He made her explain exactly where they went each day, and how the trees were looking, and what things they found in the woods, and what all the live creatures were doing.