Mrs Dean was in waiting for me next morning, and attacked me directly.
“Do, do, pray try and help me, my dear,” she whispered, so that her voice might not rise to the little bed-room where we could hear Esau stamping about, knocking the jug against the basin, and snorting like a hippopotamus over his ablutions. “You have such a way with you, and Esau looks up to you so as being a gentleman, and I know he’ll do what you tell him.”
“Nonsense, Mrs Dean!” I said; “surely he’ll mind his mother more than he does me.”
“No, my dear, no,” she said sadly. “He has always been the dearest and best of boys, and I used to make him think just as I liked; but of late, since he has been grown big and strong, he generally ends by making me think as he likes, and he is so obstinate.”
“Oh no; he’s a very good fellow.”
“Yes, my dear. Hush! don’t talk so loud. You see he has got it into his head that it is the best thing for us, and I want you to get it out.”
“But how can I, when I think the same?”
“Now, Mr Gordon, my dear, you don’t—you can’t think it’s best for you two boys to go trapesing hundreds of thousands of miles, and going living among wild beasts in forests.”
“I’m afraid I do, without the wild beasts,” I said.
“But suppose you were both taken ill, my dear, there’s no hospitals, or dispensaries, or doctors out there.”