"_That_ you shan't!" cries Jack, with animation, shaking off her hand, and looking very indignant and honest. "You are to do shabby things, and I am to have the credit of them! Thanks, very much, but I don't admire that division of labour. I don't think I ever heard a meaner proposition." Esther's little head, rich in a soft plenitude of dusky love-locks, sinks low down towards her lap; she is very easily snubbed, especially by Jack. "A nice name you'll make for yourself, Miss Essie," pursues the young Solomon, severely, still brandishing the metaphorical birch-rod over his sister. "I expect you'll make the country too hot to hold us in a short time." Esther lifts up two sudden, tearful eyes, that look like great jewels seen through running water, and says, piteously, "But, Jack, you know, as you said just now, it was the first time; one never does things well the first time one tries; one is always clumsy at them; I shall know better next time." "I don't see what 'next time' you are likely to have," says Jack, inexorable in his young severity. "It will be rather late in the day for people to propose to you when you are Bob Brandon's half-starved or whole-starved wife." "But I'm not, Jack," cries Esther, very eagerly. She looks grave enough now; rather alarmed at the little gay sketch her brother has drawn of her future destiny. "I'm not going to marry him or any one else, _ever_. Do you think I'd leave you to marry the Angel Gabriel, if he came down from heaven on purpose to ask me?" "Why did you tell Brandon that you would then?" asks the young fellow, not a bit disarmed by her sweet flattery. "I did not tell him so; I said I would try; but even if I do try, I need not succeed; and even if I do manage to get up a sort of liking for him, I need not _marry_ him. You are in such a hurry to jump at conclusions; _there's_ the beauty of his being so poor, don't you see? He cannot expect me to marry him, when he has no bread and butter to put into my mouth." "Then why be engaged to him at all, my good girl?" asks honest Jack, rather bewildered by these new lights--these subtleties on the subject of betrothal. "Why do people give babies gin?--it is not good for them, but it keeps them quiet; _that_ is precisely my principle. Being engaged to me may not be good for Robert, but it is _gin_ to him; it keeps him quiet," answers Esther, on the battle-field of whose small face smiles and tears are fighting. Her brother does not seem to see the beauty of this ingenious mode of reasoning in a very strong light. "I won't have you playing fast and loose with him," he says, very decisively, shaking a stern young head--stern, despite its curliness and its total dearth of those care-lines that are supposed to be Wisdom's harsh footprints. "He is much too good a fellow to be played tricks with; mind that, Miss Esther!"