Mr. Herapath dined with us that evening--if fish and potatoes and boiled eggs, and sour bread and pancakes, and claret and coffee can be called a dinner--but nothing I could do, though I made the best of my wretched frock and was as stiff as Clare herself, could alter his first impression. It was too bad; he had no eyes! He either could not or would not see any one but the draggled Bab--fifteen at most and a very tom-boy--whom he had carried across the river. He styled Clare, who talked Baedeker to him in her primmest and most precocious way, Miss Guest; and once at least during the evening he dubbed me plain Bab. I tried to freeze him with a look then, and father gave him a taste of his pompous manner, saying coldly that I was older than I seemed. But it was not a bit of use; I could see that he set it all down to the grand airs of a spoiled child. If I had put my hair up, it might have opened his eyes, but Clare teased me about it and I was too proud for that. When I asked him if he was fond of dancing, he said good-naturedly, "I don't visit very much, Miss Bab. I am generally engaged in the evening." Here was a chance. I was going to say that that no doubt was the reason why I had never met him, when father ruthlessly cut me short by asking, "You are not in the law?" "No," he replied. "I am in the London Fire Brigade." I think that we all upon the instant saw him in a helmet sitting at the door of the fire station by St. Martin's Church. Clare turned crimson, and his host seemed on a sudden to call his patent to mind. The moment before I had been as angry as angry could be with our guest, but I was not going to look on and see him snubbed when he was dining with us and all. So I rushed into the gap as quickly as surprise would let me with, "Oh, dear, what fun! Do tell me all about a fire!" It made matters--my matters--worse, for I could have cried with vexation when I read in his face that he had looked for their astonishment; while the ungrateful fellow set down my eager remark to childish ignorance. "Some time I will," he said with a quiet smile _de haut en bas_; "but I do not often attend one in person. I am the Chief's private secretary, aide-de-camp, and general factotum." It turned out that he was the son of a certain Canon Herapath, so that father lost sight of his patent box altogether, and they set to discussing Mr. Gladstone, while I slipped off to bed feeling as small as I ever did in my life and out of temper with everybody. Not for a long time had I been used to young men talking politics to him, when they could talk--politics--to me.