"If I had had a little sister," he says (how soothing his voice is! how quiet his ways are! He is not like any one I have ever known before. Can it be because he has no brothers and sisters?), "I should have liked her to be just like you, and I should have loved her beyond everything; but it is too late to think of that now."
"Yes, it is too late," I say, releasing my hand to pluck a sorrel leaf that is close to my elbow (we are sitting down on the warm burnt grass); "but if you had only thought of it before, say ten years ago, you could have asked your father to marry again, could you not?"
"Yes," says George, looking rather puzzled.
"And then you know you would very likely have had a sister. Step-brothers and sisters are not the same as one's own, though; sometimes they quarrel dreadfully!"
"Nell," says George, bending his fair head to look me straight in the face, "Do you like me?"
"Very much," I answer promptly; "next to mother, Jack, Alice, and Dolly, I don't know any one I like so much." His face falls a little.
"I can't expect you to have much room in your heart for me," he says, "you have so many to fill it, while I have—nobody."
"You have the Mummy."
"Yes" (laughing), "but I have room for plenty more."
"So have I! Now I should not wonder if, in a year or two, when I get to know you better, you know, I were to like you very much indeed, almost as well as Jack; you are always so good to me!"
"Dear little Nell," he says heartily, "I only hope you will. You'll have plenty of opportunity of getting better acquainted with me, for my father talks of going to Silverbridge next midsummer, to live at The Chace."
