"This is very dull," thinks Esther. "Oh! if I could lose my handkerchief, or my veil, or my gloves! Why cannot I drop my whip?" No sooner said than done. "Oh! Mr. Gerard, I am so sorry, I have dropped my whip!" Mr. Gerard, of course, dismounts and picks it up; Sir Thomas and his ward pass on. "What a happy thought that was of yours!" says St. John, wiping the little delicate switch before giving it back to her. "_Happy thought!_ What do you mean?" (reddening). "Oh! it was accident, was it? I quite thought you had dropped it on purpose, and was lost in admiration of your ingenuity." He looks at her searchingly as he speaks. "I _did_ drop it on purpose," she answers, blushing painfully. "Why do you make me tell the truth, when I did not mean to do so?" "Don't you always tell truth?" (a little anxiously). "Does anybody?" "I hope so. A few men do, I think." "As I have no pretensions to being a man, you cannot be surprised that my veracity is not my strongest point." "You are only joking" (looking at her with uneasy intentness). "Please reassure me, by saying that you do not tell any greater number of fibs than every one is compelled to contribute towards the carrying on of society." "Perhaps I do, and perhaps I do not." He looks only half-satisfied with this oracular evasion; but does not press the point farther. "It is not often that my papa and I take the air together; we think we have almost enough of each other's society in-doors." "He is your father," says Esther, rather snappishly; a little out of humour with him for having put her out of conceit with herself. "I never could see what claim to respect that was," answers he, gravely; "on the contrary I think that one's parents ought to apologise to one for bringing one, without asking one's leave, into such a disagreeable place as this world is." "Disagreeable!" cries Esther, turning her eyes, broad open, in childish wonder upon him. "Disagreeable to _you!_ Young and----" "Beautiful, were you going to say?" "No, certainly not----and with plenty of money to make it pleasant?" "But I have not plenty of money. I _shall_ have, probably, when I'm too old to care about it! _he_ is good for thirty years more, you know," nodding respectfully at Sir Thomas's broad, blue back. "It _must_ be tiring, waiting for dead men's shoes," says Esther, a little sardonically. "_Tiring!_ I believe you," says St. John, energetically; "it is worse than tiring--it is degrading. Do you suppose I do not think my own life quite as contemptible as you can? Take my word for it" (emphasising every syllable), "there is no class of men in England so much to be pitied as heirs to properties. We cannot dig; to beg we are ashamed." "I never was heir to anything, so I cannot tell."