[CHAPTER XXII]
THE FAMILY VIEW
Dick went off on a cruise, and Beatrix came to stay at Abington. She came for a few days to Caroline, and then moved down to the Abbey to be with her father when he came home at the end of the week.
Caroline thought her more lovely than ever. She was radiantly happy at the thought of her child coming, but rather quieter than she had been wont to be, though at times she showed all her exuberant high spirits.
She and Maurice got on very well together, but Caroline knew, and he also probably knew, that she did not take much interest in him. She was bright and friendly with him when he was there, but when he wasn't she seldom mentioned him. But she clung to Caroline. She had to come to her, she told her. Even if Dick hadn't been obliged to go off, she would have left him and come. Or perhaps she would have asked Caroline to come to her. Here she laughed. "I'm more in love with him than ever," she said, "and I can't bear to be parted from him. But I want you too, darling, awfully. I do miss you, and I wish we lived nearer to each other."
So she would have flown to her mother at this time. Caroline felt very tenderly towards her. She was such a child, in spite of her approaching motherhood. Maurice was touched, too, by her dependence upon Caroline. Caroline told her some of the things he had said about her, and she said: "He's an awful dear, Cara," and then went on to talk about Dick.
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."