“No. I cannot even think that,” she said, impulsively.
“Because you have not placed me on any such pedestal?”
“Perhaps so,” she laughed.
“Is that the reason?”
“No, for when I was a little girl I placed my Cousin Don and his friend Roger on the same pedestal. You haven’t tumbled off yet, and I’ve been with you ever since.”
“Judith, I do not like that,” he answered, seriously; “you shouldn’t look at people like that.”
“I don’t. At people. But I do at you, and Don, and Marion, and Aunt Affy and Ruskin and George Macdonald and Miss Mulock and Tennyson and—”
“Then I will not be frightened if we are all there. If one of us fail, you will have all the others to keep the sun in your sky.”
“Now, give me back the reins, because I have told you.”
He laid the reins in her hand, asking what she had been doing with herself all the morning.