Then there was a pause. John, behind Mr. Beresford’s chair, who had been in the house when Cara was born, and who thought he knew his master thoroughly, had much ado not to interfere, to whisper some instructions in her father’s ear as to how a child like this should be dealt with, or to breathe into Cara’s an entreaty that she would humour her papa. He said to his wife afterwards that to see them two sitting, pretending to eat their dinners, and never speaking, no more nor if they were wax images--or, when they did talk, talking like company--made him that he didn’t know whether he was standing on his head or his heels. How many hints our servants could give us if decorum permitted their interference! John felt himself a true friend of both parties, anxious to bring them as near to each other as they ought to be; but he knew that it would have been as much as his place was worth had he ventured to say anything. So he stood regretfully, wistfully, behind backs and looked on. If he could but have caught Miss Cara’s eye! but he did not, not even when, in the confusion of his feelings, he offered her mustard instead of sugar with her pudding. _Her_ feelings were so confused also that she never noticed the mistake. Thus the dinner passed with nothing but the sparest company conversation. There were but these two in the world of their immediate family, therefore they had no safe neutral ground of brothers and sisters to talk about. ‘Is your room comfortable?’ Mr. Beresford said, when they had got through a comfortless meal. ‘If I had been here sooner, I should have refurnished it; but you must do it yourself, Cara, and please your own taste.’ ‘I don’t think I have any taste,’ she said. ‘Ah, well!--perhaps it does not matter much; but the things that pleased you at ten will scarcely please you at seventeen. Seventeen are you? and _out_, I suppose? One might have been sure of that. Cherry would have no peace till she had you to go to parties with her.’ ‘We very rarely go to parties,’ said Cara, with dignity. ‘Of course at seventeen one is grown up. One does not require parties to prove _that_.’ He looked at her again, and this time laughed. ‘I am afraid you are very positive and very decided,’ he said. ‘I don’t think it is necessary, my dear, to be so sure of everything. You must not think I am finding fault.’ Her heart swelled--what else could she think? She did not wish, however, to appear angry, which evidently was impolitic, but shifted the subject to her father’s recent travels, on which there was much to be said. ‘Are you going to the geographical meeting? Are they to have one expressly for you, like last year?’ she said, not without a hidden meaning, of which he was conscious in spite of himself. ‘You know what they said last year? Of course there was no reason for it; for I am not an explorer, and discovered nothing; but how could I help it? No; there will be no meeting this time, thank Heaven.’