'I'll wager a cucumber you can tell,' said Christopher, shutting up his eyes slyly. 'There ain't no flesh and blood round in these parts like that;--no mor'n a cabbage ain't like a camellia. An' _that_ don't tell it. She's that dainty and sweet as a camellia never was--not as ever I see; and she has that fine, soft way with her, that is like the touch of a feather, and yet ain't soft neither if you come to go agin it. I tell you what, Sarah, that shows blood, that does,' concluded Christopher with a competent air. 'Our young lady, she's the real thing. You and me, now, we couldn't be like that if we was to die for it. That's blood, that is.' 'I don't know,' said the housekeeper. 'She _is_ sweet, uncommon; and she is gentle enough, and she has a will of her own, too; but I don't know--she didn't use for to be just so.' ''Cause she's growin' up to years,' said the gardener. 'La, Sally, folks is like vegetables, uncommon; you must let 'em drop their rough leaves, before you can see what they're goin' to be.' 'There warn't never no rough leaves nor rough anything about Miss Esther. I can't say as I knows what you mean, Christopher.' 'A woman needn't to know everything,' responded her brother with superiority; 'and the natural world, to be sure, ain't your department, Sarah. You're good for a great deal where you be.' CHAPTER XVIII. _A NEIGHBOUR_. The packing and sending off of boxes was ended at last; and the bare, empty, echoing, forlorn house seemed of itself to eject its inhabitants. When it came to that, everybody was ready to go. Mrs. Barker lamented that she could not go on before the rest of the family, to prepare the place a bit for them; but that was impossible; they must all go together. It was the middle of November when at last the family made their flitting. They had no dear friends to leave, and nothing particular to regret, except that one low mound in the churchyard; yet Esther felt sober as they drove away. The only tangible reason for this on which her thoughts could fix, was the fact that she was going away from the place where Pitt Dallas was at home, and to which he would come when he returned from England. She would then be afar off. Yet there would be nothing to hinder his coming to see them in their new home; so the feeling did not seem well justified. Besides that, Esther also had a somewhat vague sense that she was leaving the domain of childhood and entering upon the work and sphere of a woman. She was just going to school! But perhaps the time of confusion she had been passing through might have revealed to her that she had already a woman's life-work on her hands. And the confusion was not over, and the work only begun. She had perhaps a dim sense of this. However, she was young; and the soberness was certainly mixed with gladness. For was she not going to school, and so, on the way to do something of the work Pitt was doing, in mental furnishing and improvement? I think, gladness had the upper hand.