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 anyone 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 dubbed me plain Bab. I tried to freeze him with a look then, and papa gave him a taste of the 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 papa 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 papa 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, "Good gracious, how nice! 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 next moment that he had looked for their astonishment; while the ungrateful fellow set down my eager remark to mere 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 Captain's private secretary, aid-de-camp, and general factotum." And it turned out that he was the son of a certain Canon Herapath, so that papa 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. It was a long time since I had been used to young men talking politics to papa when they could talk--politics--to me.