“But the thing was to cure fat people!”
“Precisely.” Esther laughed a little low laugh, at which her father's eyes shone; “but you see she told Maria to exactly reverse the advice and eat everything that was injurious to stout people, and it would be just right for her.”
“I perceive,” said Armorer, dryly; “very ingenious and feminine scheme. But who is Cardigan?”
“Shuey Cardigan? He is the trainer. He is a fireman in a furniture shop, now; but he used to be the boxing teacher for some Harvard men; and he was a distinguished pugilist, once. He said to me, modestly, 'I don't suppose you will have seen my name in the Police Gazette, miss?' But he really is a very sober, decent man, notwithstanding.”
“Your Aunt Meg always was picking up queer birds! Pray, who introduced this decent pugilist?”
Esther was getting into the carriage; her face was turned from him, but he could see the pink deepen in her ear and the oval of her cheek. She answered that it was a friend of theirs, Mr. Lossing. As if the name had struck them both dumb, neither spoke for a few moments. Armorer bit a sigh in two. “Essie,” said he, “I guess it is no use to side-track the subject. You know why I came here, don't you?”
“Aunt Meg told me what she wrote to you.”
“I knew she would. She had compunctions of conscience letting him hang round you, until she told me; and then she had awful gripes because she had told, and had to confess to YOU!”
He continued in a different tone: “Essie, I have missed your mother a long while, and nobody knows how that kind of missing hurts; but it seems to me I never missed her as I do to-day. I need her to advise me about you, Essie. It is like this: I don't want to be a stern parent any more than you want to elope on a rope ladder. We have got to look at this thing together, my dear little girl, and try to—to trust each other.”
“Don't you think, papa,” said Esther, smiling rather tremulously, “that we would better wait, before we have all these solemn preparations, until we know surely whether Mr. Lossing wants me?”