A ruddier tinge rushes into Robert's already ruddy cheek—ruddy as King David's when he tended his few sheep in the Syrian pastures, before the weight of the heavy Israelitish crown, and of his own wars and murders had blanched it. Down go the carving knife and fork with a clatter, and, "like a doting mallard," he flies after the little vision, banging the door behind him with an impetus that makes his sisters bound up from their horsehair chairs like two small parched peas. Presently he brings her back in triumph.
"So you are going to run away from us, my love?" says Mrs. Brandon, holding Esther's young white hand in her old veiny one.
"Yes, I'm afraid so; it is a great bore, isn't it?" answers Esther, trying her best to lengthen her round face and look miserable.
"If it is a bore, why do you go?" inquires Miss Bessy, drily.
"Because I think I ought to make some friends for myself; I never met anybody before that had no friends, as Jack and I have not; we literally have not one—except all of you, of course," she ends with a happy after-thought.
"When you come to my age, my dear," says Mrs. Brandon, shaking her head, and all the innumerous stiff frillings of her cap, and bringing to bear on Esther's sanguine youth the weight of her own gloomy experiences, in the infuriating way that old people do, "you will have found out that a few good friends are worth more than a great many indifferent ones."
"But why should not these people be good friends?" asks the girl, a little incredulously. "Who knows? Surely there must be more good people in the world than bad ones; so the chances are in favour of them."
"We are expressly forbidden to judge," begins Miss Bessy, charitably; "otherwise——There's the first bell beginning; we had better go and put on our things, Jane."