‘My mother is calling us,’ said Edward, impatiently. Two or three times before his brother had irritated him to-day. Either he was in a very irritable mood, or Oswald was more provoking than usual. ‘I have only a few hours,’ he continued, aggrieved, in a low tone, ‘and I have scarcely spoken to you, Cara; and it was you and I who used to be the closest friends. Don’t you remember? Oswald can see you when he pleases; I have only one day. You won’t disappoint us, will you? I wish you’d go’--this was to his brother--‘I’ll follow. There are some things I want to speak to Cara about, and you have taken her up all the afternoon with your poetry. Yes, yes; I see, there is _him_ behind; but, Cara, look here, you won’t be persuaded to stay away to-night?’ ‘Not if I can help it,’ said the girl, who was too much embarrassed by this first social difficulty to feel the flattery involved. She turned to Roger, when the others went downstairs, with a somewhat disturbed and tremulous smile. ‘They are our next-door neighbours, and they are very kind,’ she said. ‘Mrs. Meredith is so good to me; as kind as if she were a relation’ (this was all Cara knew of relationships). ‘I don’t know what I should do without her; and I have known the boys all my life. Roger, won’t you sit down? I am so sorry to have been taken up like this the very moment you came.’ ‘But if they live next door, and you know them so well, I daresay you are very often taken up like this,’ said Roger, ‘and that will be hard upon your country friends. And I think,’ he added, taking courage as he found that the door remained closed, and that not even her father (estimable man!) came back, ‘that we have a better claim than they have; for you were only a child when you came to the Hill, and you have grown up there.’ ‘I like all my old friends,’ said Cara, evasively. ‘Some are--I mean they differ--one likes them for different things.’ The poor boy leaped to the worse interpretation of this, which, indeed, was not very far from the true one. ‘Some are poorer and not so fine as others,’ he said; ‘but, perhaps, Cara, the rough ones, the homely ones, those you despise, are the most true.’ ‘I don’t despise anyone,’ she said, turning away, and taking up Oswald Meredith’s book. By Jove! even when he was gone was ‘that fellow’ to have the best of it with his confounded book? Roger’s heart swelled; and then he felt that expediency was very much to be thought of, and that when a man could not have all he wanted it was wise to put up with what he could get. ‘Cara, don’t be angry with me,’ he said. ‘I shall like your friends, too, if--if you wish me. The lady is very nice and kind, as you say. She has asked me to go there to dinner, too.’ ‘You!’ Cara said, with (he thought) a gleam of annoyance. Roger jumped up, wild with rage and jealousy, but then he sat down again, which was certainly the best thing for him to do. CHAPTER XVI. SUNDAY EVENING.