They talked a great deal also of their father. Beatrix was inclined to Lady Grafton's views, which had been imparted to her as well as to Caroline. "The idea was rather a shock at first," she said. "But when I came to think it over I thought it would be rather hard lines on the old darling not to be pleased about it, if it happens. He's not so _frightfully_ much older than Dick. If Dick had been married at eighteen, as one of his shipmates was, we were reckoning it out that he might have a daughter of fourteen now, and she'd only be two years younger than Bunting." Caroline laughed. "I don't quite see what that has to do with it," she said. "Oh, I do. What I mean is that because he's our dear old Daddy, we don't think of him as somebody who ought to be falling in love at his time of life. But I don't see why he shouldn't. And he's a million times better-looking than heaps of young men. If he were on the stage lots of silly girls would be in love with him." Caroline laughed again. "I've got over all that feeling, if I ever had it," she said. "And Ella has been married before. She has been like a girl with us, but she's older in a great many ways. I suppose it would be suitable enough." "Oh, I think so. And it would be more fun for the old darling to marry somebody he was in love with, than just to marry again--somebody like the Dragon, perhaps--just because _we_ have got married and he feels rather lonely. Aunt Mary says that it isn't fair to expect him just to sit down by himself and think of us and our babies. He has as much life in him as anybody else, and he has given us the best part of it. Now we've left him he ought to have a chance on his own account. I don't look at it quite like that, but--" "I'm sure _he_ doesn't," Caroline interrupted her. "He has been the dearest father to us that anybody could have had, but we have made him happy, too. It isn't as if he had sacrificed himself." "That's what I told her, and she said the sacrifice would begin now, if we didn't do all we could to help this on. What _does_ Ella think about it, Cara? You ought to have found out by this time. I'm not sure I shan't ask her when I see her." "You won't want to when you do see her. She is just the same--towards him and towards us. I think she always will be. That's why I sometimes think that it would be rather nice if it did happen--nice for us, I mean, as well as for Dad." "That's what I have come to think, too, with Aunt Mary to assist me. What she says is that if there were a question of his marrying somebody of what would be called a suitable age we should probably be glad of it, as we shouldn't have to bother ourselves about Dad when we simply wanted to be selfish with our own homes and husbands." "Yes, that's the sort of thing that Aunt Mary _would_ say." "But what we really object to is his having the sort of happiness we have got for ourselves. Because he wouldn't get any of it from _us_."