"Whether you see much of him?"
"Yes."
"What he says to you?"
"Come, I cannot promise that," says Esther, bursting out laughing. "Oh you dear old goose! are you jealous of a name, a shade, an imagination?"
"I am jealous," he answers, reddening. "I can no more help it than a man in the gout can help having twinges. I shall always be jealous until you are really mine past stealing or taking back again: after that I never shall."
"I should hope not," retorts she, with levity: "if you were, I should think it my duty to try and give you some cause."
The church bell has ceased; there is no sound in the quiet room but that of one fat-bodied bluebottle, labouring and buzzing up the pane, and then tumbling back again. Robert has abandoned the window-sill, finding it a painful and not luxurious seat: he is walking up and down, up and down; one stride and a half of his long legs taking him from end to end of the little room. Esther has thrown herself into an American rocking chair, and is rocking violently backwards and forwards, trying her best to tip herself over.
"Promise me, Essie," says the young man, coming to a sudden standstill beside her—"promise me that you'll talk seriously of—you know what—when you come home; I give you till then? Good heavens! what sort of stuff could Jacob have been made of to have held out all those fourteen years!"
"'The little maid replied,
Some say a little sighed,
And what shall we have for to eat, eat, eat?
Will the love that you're so rich in
Make a fire in the kitchen,
Or the little god of love turn the spit, spit, spit?'"
answers Esther, evading her lover's urgency by a quotation.