Next day Oswald came again, and told her of a forgotten engagement which he had been obliged to keep; and they chatted gaily as before; and he brought her some poems, printed in a magazine, which sounded beautiful when he read them, to her great delight, but did not seem so beautiful when she read them over herself, as she begged she might be allowed to do. After this there was a great deal of intercourse between the two houses, and Cara’s life grew brighter. Now and then, it was true, she would be left to spend an evening alone; but she got other friends, and went to some parties with Mrs. Meredith, Oswald attending them. He was always about; he came and had long private talks with her, reading his verses and appealing to her sympathies and counsel; he walked with her when she went out with his mother; he was always by her side wherever they went. ‘I know Edward will cut me out when he comes, so I must make the running now,’ he said often, and Cara no longer wondered what making the running meant. She got so used to his presence that it seemed strange when he was not there. ‘It’s easy to see what that will end in,’ said Nurse to John and Cook in the kitchen. ‘I wish as one could see what the other would end in,’ Cook replied. But the household watched the two young people with proud delight, going to the window to look at them when they went out, and rejoicing over the handsome couple. ‘I always said as our Miss Cara was one as would settle directly,’ her faithful attendant said. ‘Seventeen! it’s too young, that is, for anything.’ ‘But he haven’t got a penny,’ said Cook, who was more prudent, ‘and he don’t do nothing. I’d like a man as could work for me, if I was Miss Cara.’ ‘I’d like him better if he hadn’t no call to work,’ said Nurse, with true patrician feeling. But the chief parties knew nothing of these remarks. They were very cheerful and full of mutual confidences. Oswald confiding to Cara his doubts and difficulties, his aspirations (which were chiefly in verse) and light-hearted anticipations, not going so far as to be called hopes, of sitting one day on the woolsack. Cara, though she had a great respect for Oswald, did not think much about the woolsack. But it was astonishing how she got used to him, how she liked him, and, notwithstanding the occasional dull evenings, how much more variety seemed to have come into her life. Sometimes Mrs. Meredith herself would talk to the girl about her son. ‘If he would work more steadily I should be happier, Cara,’ she would say; ‘and perhaps if he had a strong inducement he would work. He is so clever, and able to do what he likes.’