A ruddier tinge rushes into Robert's already ruddy cheek--ruddy as King David's when he tended his few sheep in the Syrian pastures, before the weight of the heavy Israelitish crown, and of his own wars and murders had blanched it. Down go the carving knife and fork with a clatter, and, "like a doting mallard," he flies after the little vision, banging the door behind him with an impetus that makes his sisters bound up from their horsehair chairs like two small parched peas. Presently he brings her back in triumph. "So you are going to run away from us, my love?" says Mrs. Brandon, holding Esther's young white hand in her old veiny one. "Yes, I'm afraid so; it is a great bore, isn't it?" answers Esther, trying her best to lengthen her round face and look miserable. "If it is a bore, why do you go?" inquires Miss Bessy, drily. "Because I think I ought to make some friends for myself; I never met anybody before that had no friends, as Jack and I have not; we literally have not one--except all of you, of course," she ends with a happy after-thought. "When you come to my age, my dear," says Mrs. Brandon, shaking her head, and all the innumerous stiff frillings of her cap, and bringing to bear on Esther's sanguine youth the weight of her own gloomy experiences, in the infuriating way that old people do, "you will have found out that a few good friends are worth more than a great many indifferent ones." "But why should not these people be good friends?" asks the girl, a little incredulously. "Who knows? Surely there must be more good people in the world than bad ones; so the chances are in favour of them." "We are expressly forbidden to judge," begins Miss Bessy, charitably; "otherwise----There's the first bell beginning; we had better go and put on our things, Jane." CHAPTER VII. Five minutes more, and three large brown parasols, a large black poke bonnet and two little dirt-coloured ones, are seen slowly pacing down the hill to the House of Prayer. The lovers have Plas Berwyn to themselves. Bob has gained his point, despite a parting fleer from Bessy as to the undesirability of neglecting the Creator for the creature. "Tim Dowler! Tim Dowler! Tim Dowler!" cries Esther, joyously, jumping about the room like a child, and mimicking the one church bell which is heard clearly tinkling through the valley. "Listen, Bob! Does it not say 'Tim Dowler' just exactly as if it were speaking it? Oh! look here: I'll lose all their places for them in their good books, and I bet anything they'll never find them again." So saying, she proceeds to remove the paper-knife from the "Saturday Night of the World," and carefully closes "Stop the Leak." "What spirits you are in to-day, Essie!" says Bob, balancing himself on the window-sill, with his long legs dangling lugubriously, and following her about the room with his eyes, as a child does a butterfly. "I believe it is because you are going to be rid of me for a fortnight."