"We don't care that you should do better! Of course we care. What are you thinking of, child? Your uncle studies your interests as much as he would study Sara's."
"More!" impulsively interrupted the doctor, who was pacing the room, his hands under his coat-tails. "I might feel less scrupulous in opposing Sara's inclination."
"You hear, Caroline! The doctor opposes this inclination of yours!"
Caroline cast a look to him, a sort of helpless appeal: not only that he would not oppose it, but that he would set right Miss Davenal.
"I don't oppose it, Bettina: I don't go so far as that. I recommend them to wait. In a year or two"----
A loud knock at the hall-door startled Dr. Davenal. Knocks there were pretty frequent--loud ones too; but this was loud and long as a peal of thunder. And it startled somebody besides the doctor.
[CHAPTER VII.]
AN INTERRUPTION.
That somebody was Neal. Neal's mind was by far too composed a one to be ruffled by any sort of shock, and Neal's nerves were in first-rate order. It happened, however, that Neal was rather unpleasantly near to the front door at that moment, and the sudden sound, so sharp and long, did make him start.
When Neal removed the dinner things, he placed his plate and glasses in the pantry, and carried the tray with the other articles down to the kitchen. In going upstairs again he was called to by Watton, the upper woman-servant of the family, who was as old as Neal himself, and had lived with them for some years. She was in the apartment opening from the kitchen, a boarded room with a piece of square carpet in the middle. It was called the housekeeper's room, and was used as a sitting-room by the servants when their kitchen work was over for the day. The servants' entrance to the house was on this lower floor; steps ascending from it to the outer door in the back garden.