So, with a little flagging talk, the dinner passes, and the modest dessert appears: scarlet pyramids of strawberries, great bag-shaped British Queens, and little racy, queer-tasted hautbois. Sarah retires, and the embargo is taken off Esther's speech. "Is she gone--finally gone?" she cries, very eagerly. "Heaven be praised for that! I thought she would never have done clattering those spoons. Oh, Jack, what a heavy weight a piece of news is to carry! How I sympathise with the woman who had to whisper to the rushes about Midas' ears! I have been dying all through dinner for some rushes to whisper to." "To whisper _what_ to?" asks the boy, his eyes opening very wide and round. "Jack, do I look taller than usual to-night?" "No." "Broader?" "Not that I perceive." "More consequential?" "Much as usual. You never are a woman with 'a presence.'" "Is it possible that there's no difference at all in me?" "None whatever; except that, now I look at you, your cheeks are, if possible, redder than usual. Why should there be any?" "Because" (drawing herself up) "I have to-day passed a turning-point in my history. I have had--a proposal." "Who from?--one of the haymakers?" "No. That would not have surprised me much more, though. Let me get it out as quick as I can, now that the string of my tongue is loosed. Robert Brandon was here to-day." "As I know to my cost," says Jack, with rather a rueful face at the recollection of his unpalatable dinner. "And--and--how shall I word it prettiest?--asked me to be his." "The devil he did!" exclaims Jack, surprised into strong, language. "Yes, the devil he did! as you epigrammatically remark." "And you, what answer did you give?" asks the boy, quickly, his mouth emulating the example of his eyes, and opening wide, too. "I said I was much obliged, but that, for the present, I preferred being my own." "You said 'No,' of course?" "Yes, I did; ever so many 'Noes.' I did not count them, but I'm sure their name was Legion." Jack gives a sigh of relief, and throws a biscuit to the ceaselessly attent sheep-dog. "Poor beggar!" he says. "Here, Luath, old man. You old muff! why did you not catch it? He is as good a fellow as ever I came across, and now, I suppose, it will be all different and disagreeable. Hang it! what a plague women are!" "But, Jack----" "Well, Essie, not done yet? Any more unlucky fellows sent off with their tails between their legs?" "No, no; but, Jack" (looking down, and staining her fingers with the henna of the strawberries), "I--I'm not quite sure that, after all those 'Noes,' I did not say something that was not quite 'No.'" "That was 'Yes?'" "No, not 'Yes' either; not positive, actual 'Yes;' something betwixt and between; a sort of possible, hypothetical 'Yes.'" "More fool you!" said Jack, briefly.