Esther made no answer.
'I'll be back at Christmas anyhow, you know; and that's only three months away, or a little more.'
'For how long?'
'Never mind; we will make a little do the work of a great deal. It will seem a long time, it will be so good.'
'No,' said Esther; 'that will make it only the shorter.'
'Why, Esther,' said he, half laughing, 'I didn't know you cared so much about me. I don't deserve all that.'
'I am not crying,' said the girl, rising with a sort of childish dignity; 'but I shall be alone.'
They had been sitting on a rock, resting and talking, and now set out again to go home. Esther spoke no more; and Pitt was silent, not knowing what to say; but he watched her, and saw that if she had not been crying at the time she had made that declaration, the tears had taken their revenge and were coming now. Yet only in a calm, repressed way; now and then he saw a drop fall, or caught a motion of Esther's hand which could only have been made to prevent a drop from falling. She walked along steadily, turning neither to the right hand nor the left; she who ordinarily watched every hedgerow and ran to explore every group of plants in the corner of a field, and was keen to see everything that was to be seen in earth or heaven. Pitt walked along silently too. He was at a careless age, but he was a generous-minded fellow; and to a mind of that sort there is something exceedingly attractive and an influence exceedingly powerful in the fact of being trusted and depended on.
'Mother,' he said when he got home, 'I wish you would look after that little girl now and then.'
'What little girl?'