'Out of your little vacation!' said his mother reproachfully. She was angry and hurt, as near tears as she often came; but Mrs. Dallas was not wont to show her discomfiture in that way.
'Yes, mother; I am very sorry.'
'Why do you care about seeing them?—care so much, I mean,' his father inquired, with a keen side-glance at his son.
'I have made a promise, sir. I am bound to keep it.'
'What promise?' both parents demanded at once.
'To look after the daughter, in case of the father's death.'
'But he is not dead. He is well enough; as likely to live as I am.'
'How can I be sure of that? You have not heard from him for months, you say.'
'I should have heard, if anything had happened to him.'
'That is not certain, either,' said Pitt, thinking that Esther's applying to his father and mother in case of distress was more than doubtful.