Red as a Rose is She: A Novel. Broughton Rhoda
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.
"Don't scold me, you bad boy!" she cries, running over to him and putting her gentle arms about his neck in the caressing way which sisters affect so much, and which brothers, in general, disrelish so highly, "or I vow I'll cry, and you know you hate that."
"I hate your making a fool of yourself worse," growls Jack, mollified, but struggling. "I say, you need not strangle a fellow."
"Wait till I do make a fool of myself," she says, very gaily. "I'm only talking about it as yet, and there's a good wide ditch between saying and doing."
"More shame for you to say what you don't mean."
"Jack, dear boy, don't you know that I hate saying things that vex a person? I never had a faculty for telling people home-truths; I'd far sooner tell them any amount of stories; and I got so tired of saying 'No,' and he seemed to take it so much to heart, that I said 'Yes,' just for a change – just for peace. In fact, 'anything for a quiet life' is my motto."
"And may I ask what you intend to live upon?" asks Jack (the romantic side of whose mind lies at present fallow and uncultivated, and whose thoughts, Briton-like, speedily turn from "love's young dream" to the pound, shilling, and pence aspect of the matter).
"On love, to be sure. On – what is it? – 6s. 6d. a day; and perhaps I may take in soldiers' washing," Esther says, bursting out into a violent fit of laughing.
"Uncommonly funny, no doubt!" Jack says, laughing too, but sorely against his will. "And do you mean to tell me that you like Brandon all of a sudden enough to be such an abject pauper with him for the rest of your days? Why it was only yesterday that you were laughing at him, saying he danced like a pair of tongs."
Esther has slidden down to the floor, and sits there tailor-fashion.
"I don't mean to tell you anything of the kind," she answers, gravely. "Poor dear fellow! – it is very odious of me – but between you and me I think I should survive it if I were to know that I should never see him again; only, please don't tell him I said so."
"Love, who to none beloved to love again remits – "
she repeats softly, musing to herself; "that is a very lovely line, but it is horribly untrue."
"What do you mean to do then, if it is not an impertinent question?" asks Jack, throwing back his young head, and looking in an inquisitorial manner at the penitent at his feet from under his eyelids. "Marry a man that you don't like, and who has not a farthing to keep you on, merely because he is the first person that asked you?"
"Nothing is farther from my intentions," says Esther, getting rather red. "And how unkind of you to twit me with my dearth of admirers. I mean you to interpose your parental authority and forbid the banns; I intend to shift the odium of the transaction on to your shoulders," she says, relapsing into levity, – "poor, dear shoulders!" (patting them very fondly) "they are not very wide, but they are broader than mine, at all events; to them I transfer my difficulties."
"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!"
"I have not the slightest desire in life to play tricks with him; if I ever do play tricks,