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Updated: June 18, 2025
Before their ramble was over, what with the sweet twilight gladness of Mark, the merry noonday brightness of Saffy, and the loveliness all around, the heart of Hester was quiet and hopeful as a still mere that waits in the blue night the rising of the moon. She had some things to trouble her, but none of them had touched the quick of her being.
Just as Hester was leaving the room to get ready to go with Saffy Mark was not able for a long walk the major rose, and overtaking her in the anteroom, humbly whispered the request that she would walk with him alone, as he much wished a private conversation with her. Hester, though with a little surprise, also a little undefined anxiety, at once consented, but ran first to her mother.
Assuming heart in his absence, Cornelius went freely wandering about the house, many parts of which had not yet lost to him the interest of novelty, and lunched with his mother and Hester and Saffy like one of the family.
Saffy, who had been seated gazing into the fire, and had no idea of what had taken place, called out in a strange voice, "Markie! Markie!" Hester turned to her at the cry, and saw her apparently following something with her eyes along the wall from the bed to the window. At the curtained window she gazed for a moment, and then her eyes fell, and she sat like one in a dream.
Cornelius burst into a great laugh, and Saffy into silent tears, for she thought she had made a fool of herself. She was not a priggish child, and did not deserve the mockery with which her barbarian brother invaded her little temple. She was such a true child that her mother was her neighbor, and present to all her being not her eyes only or her brain, but her heart and spirit as well.
Saffy wouldn't look at me for a long time that's the last of the litter, you know; she shrieked when they called to her to come to me, and cried, 'That's ugly Corney! I won't have ugly Corney! So you may see how I am used! But I've got her under my thumb at last, and she's useful. Then there's that prig Mark! I always liked the little wretch, though he is such a precious humbug!
He turned and kissed Saffy, but still said nothing. Hester's face flushed a "celestial rosy red." Her first thought was of the lovely things of the country and the joy of them. Like Moses on mount Pisgah, she looked back on the desert of a London winter, and forth from the heart of a blustering spring into a land of promise.
In the meantime, Hester, followed by Vavasor, while Saffy ran to her mother, sped along the bank till she came to the weir, over which hardly any water was running.
There were not now many flowers, but Saffy was pulling stalks of feathery-headed grasses, while Mark was walking quietly along by the brink of the stream, stopping every now and then to look into it. The bank was covered with long grass hanging over, here and there a bush of rushes amongst it, and in parts was a little undermined.
"And for the same reason," remarked her father, who had come up and stood behind them, "as the finest lady at the ball: he wants more air. I wonder whether the poor fellow knows he is in a cage?" "I think he does," said Saffy, "else he would run away from us." "Are you thinking of the dog-fish still?" asked Vavasor.
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