Just then I heard my father and Mr. Osborne ascending the stairs. I was half sorry, and yet altogether glad that they were coming; and I was a little curious how my father would receive my new acquaintance. My father received him with stately politeness, distant but not ungracious, and as Mr. Osborne and he took their usual places, they began their ordinary conversation. When Mr. Edgar joined in it, I discovered from what they said that he was a student of Corpus, a close neighbor, and it amused me a little to watch the three gentlemen as they talked; of course, my father and Mr. Osborne were in the daily habit of talking, without any greater reference to me than if I had been a very little girl with a doll and a pinafore. I was not intellectual. I did not care for their discussions about books--and I expected no share in their conversation, nor wished it. I was quite pleased to sit by, with the ring of their voices in my ear, doing my needlework. I always worked at something, during these times; and thinking my own thoughts. But Mr. Edgar, who was unused to this, and perhaps did not think me quite so little a girl as my father and his friend did, was puzzled and disconcerted, as I saw, by my exclusion from the stream of talk. I had a certain pleasure in showing him how much a matter of course this was. I had never known a young man of rank and age before, but I had a perverse delight in making myself appear something different to what I was. I turned half aside to the window, and hemmed as only demure little girls can hem, when grave talk is going on over their heads. But I saw very well how uncertainly he was regarding me--how puzzled he was that I should be left out of the conversation, and how he wanted to be polite and amiable, and draw me in. "How is the garden, Hester?" said Mr. Osborne at last, rising and coming towards me with a subject adapted to the capacity of the little girl, "what! blossom already on that little apple tree--what a sturdy little fellow it is! Now, Southcote, be honest--how many colds has Hester taken this winter in consequence of your trap for wet feet--that grass crotchet of yours?" "Hester is a sensible girl in some respects," said my father, "she never takes cold--and your argument against my grass is antiquated and feeble. I will not plan my garden by your advice, Osborne." "My advice is always to be depended on," said Mr. Osborne; "you have taken it in more important matters, and I think I know some matters in which it would be very well you took it again." "That is my affair," said my father coldly. "Advice is a dangerous gift, Mr. Edgar," he continued, with a somewhat sarcastic smile, "every man who has the faculty thinks himself infallible--and when you bring yourself ill fortune by following good advice and friendly counsel, you are in a dangerous dilemma--to hide your failure or to lose your friend."