"Did you ever hear of the invitations that the Chinese give one another?" he asks, laughing, and switching off a fern-head with a baby umbrella—"which, however pressing they may be, are always expected by the giver to be declined. My invitation to Conny was a Chinese one: I was not quite sure that she would understand it as such, and I was so afraid that she would yield to my importunities, that I had to embroider a little in the matter of distance; do you see?"
There has been rain in the morning; now the clouds have rent themselves asunder, and broken up into great glistering rocks, peaks, and spires, such as no fuller on earth could white:
"Blue isles of heaven laugh between."
The breeze comes more freshly over the wet grasses and flowers, and blows in little fickle puffs against St. John's bronzed cheeks and Esther's carnation ones. The girl's heart is pulsing with a keen, sharp joy; all the keener, as the heaven's blue is deeper for the clouds that hover about it.
"I shall have him all to myself for three hours," she is saying inwardly; "he will speak to no one but me; he will hear no one else's voice (she forgets the parson and the clerk). Surely Bob may spare me these three hours, and just a few more, out of the great long life during which I shall tramp-tramp at his side! Three hours:
"Then let come what come may
No matter if I go mad,
I shall have had my day."
"Let me carry your prayer book?"
"No, thanks; it is not heavy" (retaining it, mindful of a certain inscription in the fly-leaf).
"I am like a retriever; I like to have something to carry" (taking it from her with gentle violence).
"'Esther Craven from Robert Brandon.' Who is Robert Brandon when he is at home?" (speaking rather shortly.)