"Battalion B are boys," retorted Rob. "Your cousin seems to find our Prudy beautiful."
"Lester is an artist," said Hester. "Prue is the handsomest girl I ever saw, but she isn't Roberta." And Hester twined an admiring and loving embrace of both eyes and arms around the friend in whose mobile face she found a beauty more entrancing than Prue's.
"We must go down, Hester dear," said Rob, patting the arm under her right hand. She had grown quiet since Hester had told her of the sad children, and the deep womanliness which lay hidden in her merry girl-heart, and which had grown deeper and more apparent since her father's death, softened the sparkling face into a most becoming gravity. "Perhaps something can be done, Hester. Perhaps something good may come, and through you, to the poor mite whom you saw! And perhaps, after all, your discontent is that 'divine discontent,' which makes the world better."
Hester smiled gladly; it was a comfort to feel that Rob did not think her ridiculous.
The Greys' guests departed after an early tea to which they were easily persuaded to remain. All three Grey girls saw them off on the edge of the October twilight, and came home under Fayre's elms and the young moon, discussing Hester's newly presented cousin, with unanimous praise.
"He may be an artist, but he liked the little grey house," said Prue, as they stood in a sisterly row, warming their feet, first the right ones and then the left, like a kind of drill, before the wood fire on the hearth.
"He likes it because he is an artist; not in spite of being one, as you imply, Prudy," said Wythie.
"I am glad that he has come home to Hester, instead of becoming the Mikado's prime minister," said Rob, as if Lester Baldwin had narrowly missed that as an alternative.