Bob dashes down "Thou Fool!" in a fury, and his blue eyes shine with quick fire.
"Mother, do you call that the 'charity that thinketh no evil?' I tell you, Essie is willing to marry me to-morrow, but I—"
"But you are not willing!" interrupts the domestic pack, bursting again into full cry.
"Tell us something a little more probable, Bob, and we'll try and believe it," subjoins Bessy, with a small curling smile.
"It is a matter of perfect indifference to me whether you believe me or not," replies the young man, sternly; keeping under, with great difficulty, an unmanly longing to box Miss Bessy's ears. "I only tell you, upon my honour, that Essie is willing to marry me, and that I—solely for her own sake, solely because I know that an inferior being cannot make a superior one happy—am not willing."
"And a very good thing too," cries Bessy, viciously. "I always thought you were singularly ill-suited to one another; I always said so to mamma and Jane. Didn't I, mamma?—didn't I, Jane? 'Can two walk together except they be agreed?' you know."
"Girls," says poor Bob, harried almost beyond endurance, and addressing his sisters by the conveniently broad appelative which covers everything virgin between the ages of six and a hundred—"Girls, would you mind going into the dining-room for a few minutes? I want to speak to mother alone."
The "girls" look rebellious, but their rebellion does not break into open mutiny. Rising, they comply with his request.
"Of course, what most nearly concerns our only brother cannot be supposed to have any interest for us," says Bessy, leaving her sting behind, like a wasp, and shutting the door with as near an approach to a bang as her conscience will admit.
As soon as they are well out of the room, Bob comes and sits at his mother's feet, and lays his head on her lap, as he used to do when he was a very little boy. She passes her fingers fondly through his curly hair.