Cara opened her blue eyes very wide. She was on the whole gratified by the idea that she had heard things she ought not to hear. That perhaps accounted for her superior wisdom which she felt in herself. ‘Mamma says I ought to learn to judge for myself,’ she said, with dignity. ‘When there is an argument going on I like to listen, and often she makes me tell her what I thought, and which side I take.’ Mrs. Burchell gave Agnes a significant look; and Agnes, it must be allowed, who heard little conversation which did not turn on personal subjects, was slightly horrified too. ‘Poor child!’ repeated the rector’s wife; ‘at your age!--and what kind of subjects do they talk about? It must be very bad for you.’ ‘Oh, about books chiefly,’ said Cara, ‘and pictures--but I don’t understand pictures--and sometimes about politics. I like that--about Ireland and Mr. Gladstone they talked once. And to hear the Frenchmen talk about Ireland--just as if it were Poland, papa said.’ ‘Well, I am sure it could not be much worse,’ Mrs. Burchell said, after a pause of alarm. She did not know much about Ireland, except that they shot landlords there, and that when she advertised for a housemaid she said ‘No Irish need apply;’ and she knew nothing at all about Poland, and what the analogy was between them she had not an idea. She looked at Cara after this with a little awe; but naturally held fast by her censure, which no doubt must be just, though she could not tell how. ‘It cannot be good for you to hear such talk as that,’ she said. ‘A good romp and go to bed at eight o’clock, that is what I hold with for my girls. You are a great deal too old for your age. Before you are eighteen, people will be taking you for five-and-twenty. To hear you talk, one would think you were eighteen now.’ ‘I wish they would,’ said Cara; ‘I don’t like to be always thought a child. I have often things I want to say just on my very lips. I know I could set the people right if I might but speak. But mamma holds up her finger, and I dare not. If I were eighteen, I should be grown up, and I might give my opinion--and twenty-five! Is Agnes twenty-five?’