Lina sprang to him at once; Esther coloured, and began to account for the rest of the family. "I hear," said Cecil, as low tones came through the closed doors of the back drawing-room, "they work as hard here as my sister does!"
"I think my aunt has almost done," said Essie, with a shy doubt whether she ought to stay. "Come, Lina, I must get you ready for tea."
"No, no," said Cecil, "don't go! You need not be as much afraid of me as that first time I walked in, and thought I had got into a strange house."
Essie laughed a little, and said, "A month ago! Sometimes it seems a very long time, and sometimes a very short one."
"I hope it seems a very long time that you have known me."
"Well, Johnny and all the rest had known you ever so long," answered she, with a confusion of manner that expressed a good deal more than the words. "I really must go-"
"Not till you have told me more than that," cried Cecil, seizing his opportunity with a sudden rush of audacity. "If you know me, can you-can you like me? Can't you? Oh, Essie, stay! Could you ever love me, you peerless, sweetest, loveliest-"
By this time Mrs. Brownlow, who had heard Cecil's boots on the stairs, and particularly wished to stave matters off till after the Friar's mission, had made a hasty conclusion of her lesson, and letting her girls depart, opened the door. She saw at once that she was too late; but there was no retreat, for Esther flew past her in shy terror, and Cecil advanced with the earnest, innocent entreaty, "Oh, Mrs. Brownlow, make her hear me! I must have it out, or I can't bear it."
"Oh," said she, "it has come to this, has it?" speaking half- quaintly, half-sadly, and holding Lina kindly back.
"I could not help it!" he went on. "She did look so lovely, and she is so dear! Do get her down, that I may see her again. I shall not have a happy moment till she answers me."
"Are you sure you will have a happy moment then?"
"I don't know. That's the thing! Won't you help a fellow a bit, Mrs. Brownlow? I'm quite done for. There never was any one so nice, or so sweet, or so lovely, or so unlike all the horrid girls in society! Oh, make her say a kind word to me!"
"I'll make her," said little Lina, looking up from her aunt's side. "I like you very much, Captain Evelyn, and I'll run and make Essie tell you she does."
"Not quite so fast, my dear," said her aunt, as both laughed, and Cecil, solacing himself with a caress, and holding the little one very close to him on his knee, where her intentions were deferred by his watch and appendages.
"I suppose you don't know what your mother would say?" began Mrs. Brownlow.
"I have not told her, but you know yourself she would be all right. Now, aren't you sure, Mrs. Brownlow? She isn't up to any nonsense?"
"No, Cecil, I don't think she would oppose it. Indeed, my dear boy, I wish you happiness, but Esther is a shy, startled little being, and away from her mother; and perhaps you will have to be patient."
"But will you fetch her-or at least speak to her?" said he, in a tone not very like patience; and she had to yield, and be the messenger.
She found Esther fluttering up and down her room like a newly-caught bird. "Oh, Aunt Carey, I must go home! Please let me!" she said.
"Nay, my dear, can't I help you for once?" and Esther sprang into her arms for comfort; but even then it was plain to a motherly eye that this was not the distress that poor Bobus had caused, but rather the agitation of a newly-awakened heart, terrified at its own sensations. "He wants you to come and hear him out," she said, when she had kissed and petted the girl into more composure.
"Oh, must I? I don't want. Oh, if I could go home! They were so angry before. And I only said 'if,' and never meant-"
"That was the very thing, my dear," said her aunt with a great throb of pain. "You were quite right not to encourage my poor Bobus; but this is a very different case, and I am sure they would wish you to act according as you feel."
Esther drew a great gasp; "You are sure they would not think me wrong?"
"Quite sure," was the reply, in full security that her mother would be rapturous at the nearly certain prospect of a coronet. "Indeed, my dear, no one can find any fault with you. You need not be afraid. He is good and worthy, and they will be glad if you wish it."
Wish was far too strong a word for poor frightened Esther; she could only cling and quiver.
"Shall I tell him to go and see them at Kencroft?"
"Oh, do, do, dear Aunt Carey! Please tell him to go to papa, and not want to see me till-"
"Very well, my dear child; that will be the best way. Now I will send you up some tea, and then you shall put Lina to bed; and you and I will slip off quietly together, and go to St. Andrew's in peace, quite in a different direction from the others, before they set out."
Meantime Cecil had been found by Babie tumbling about the music and newspapers on the ottoman, and on her observation-
"Too soon, sir! And pray what mischief still have your idle hands found to do?"
"Don't!" he burst out; "I'm on the verge of distraction already! I can't bear it!"
"Is there anything the matter? You're not in a scrape? You don't want Jock?" she said.
"No, no-only I've done it. Babie, I shall go mad, if I don't get an answer soon."
Babie was much too sharp not to see what he meant. She knew in a kind of intuitive, undeveloped way how things stood with Bobus, and this gave a certain seriousness to her manner of saying-
"Essie?"
"Of course, the darling! If your mother would only come and tell me,-but she was frightened, and won't say anything. If she won't, I'm the most miserable fellow in the world."
"How stupid you must have been!" said Babie. "That comes of you, neither of you, ever reading. You couldn't have done it right, Cecil."
"Do you really think so?" he asked, in such piteous, earnest tones that he touched her heart.
"Dear Cecil," she said, "it will be all right. I know Essie likes you better than any one else."
She had almost added "though she is an ungrateful little puss for doing so," but before the words had time to come out of her mouth, Cecil had flown at her in a transport, thrown his arms round her and kissed her, just as her mother opened the door, and uttered an odd incoherent cry of amazement.
"Oh, Mother Carey," cried Cecil, colouring all over, "I didn't know what I was doing! She gave me hope!"
"I give you hope too," said Caroline, "though I don't know how it might have been if she had come down just now!"
"Don't!" entreated Cecil. "Babie is as good as my sister. Why, where is she?"
"Fled, and no wonder!"
"And won't she, Esther, come?"
"She is far too much frightened and overcome. She says you may go to her father, and I think that is all you can expect her to say."
"Is it? Won't she see me? I don't want it to be obedience."
"I don't think you need have any fears on that score."
"You don't? Really now? You think she likes me just a little? How soon can I get down? Have you a train-bill?"
Then during the quest into trains came a fit of humility. "Do you think they will listen to me? You are not the sort who would think me a catch, and I know I am a very poor stick compared with any of you, and should have gone to the dogs long ago but for Jock, ungrateful ass as I was to him last year. But if I had such a creature as that to take care of, why it would be like having an angel about one. I would-indeed I would-reverence, yes, and worship her all my life long."
"I am sure you would. I think it would be a very happy and blessed thing for you both, and I have no doubt that her father will think so too. Now, here are the others coming home, and you must behave like a rational being, even though you don't see Essie at tea."