“How changed it is!” I said again.

“Why, so it is,” he answered much more cheerfully; “and it is wisdom in you to keep me to the bright side of the picture.” (The idea of my wisdom!) “These are things I never talk about or even think about, excepting in the growlery here.  If you consider it right to mention them to Rick and Ada,” looking seriously at me, “you can.  I leave it to your discretion, Esther.”

“I hope, sir—­” said I.

“I think you had better call me guardian, my dear.”

I felt that I was choking again—­I taxed myself with it, “Esther, now, you know you are!”—­when he feigned to say this slightly, as if it were a whim instead of a thoughtful tenderness.  But I gave the housekeeping keys the least shake in the world as a reminder to myself, and folding my hands in a still more determined manner on the basket, looked at him quietly.

“I hope, guardian,” said I, “that you may not trust too much to my discretion.  I hope you may not mistake me.  I am afraid it will be a disappointment to you to know that I am not clever, but it really is the truth, and you would soon find it out if I had not the honesty to confess it.”

He did not seem at all disappointed; quite the contrary.  He told me, with a smile all over his face, that he knew me very well indeed and that I was quite clever enough for him.

“I hope I may turn out so,” said I, “but I am much afraid of it, guardian.”

“You are clever enough to be the good little woman of our lives here, my dear,” he returned playfully; “the little old woman of the child’s (I don’t mean Skimpole’s) rhyme: 

     “‘Little old woman, and whither so high?’
      ‘To sweep the cobwebs out of the sky.’

“You will sweep them so neatly out of our sky in the course of your housekeeping, Esther, that one of these days we shall have to abandon the growlery and nail up the door.”

This was the beginning of my being called Old Woman, and Little Old Woman, and Cobweb, and Mrs. Shipton, and Mother Hubbard, and Dame Durden, and so many names of that sort that my own name soon became quite lost among them.

“However,” said Mr. Jarndyce, “to return to our gossip.  Here’s Rick, a fine young fellow full of promise.  What’s to be done with him?”

Oh, my goodness, the idea of asking my advice on such a point!

“Here he is, Esther,” said Mr. Jarndyce, comfortably putting his hands into his pockets and stretching out his legs.  “He must have a profession; he must make some choice for himself.  There will be a world more wiglomeration about it, I suppose, but it must be done.”

“More what, guardian?” said I.