‘I go with her? You know how I hate going out!’
‘Once at least—say only once. You must do that, and then you will find Cara will have her own friends; she will not be a difficulty any longer. I am glad you trust in me to do what I can for her—and Oswald.’
‘Of course I trust in you,’ he said; ‘but it will break up everything. I know it will—after coming to a kind of calm, after feeling that I can settle down again, and that life is not utterly distasteful to me—you will not wonder that I should be frightened for everything. And you, who have done so much for me.’
‘I have not done anything,’ said Mrs. Meredith, looking up smiling from her book.
‘You say so; but it is you who have done everything; and if I am to be plucked from my refuge now, and pitched forth upon the world—— I believe I am a coward. I shrink from mere outside intercourse, from being knocked up against one and another, and shut out from what I prize most.’
‘How can that be?’ she said; ‘you get fretful, you men, when everything does not go as you wish. Have a little patience. When Oswald came home, it seemed at first, as if he, dear boy, was going to upset all my habits; but it was a vain fear. The first little strangeness is over, and he has settled down, and we are happy—happier than ever. It will be the same with Cara and you.’
Beresford gave a half-groan of dissent. I fear Mrs. Meredith saw that it had a double meaning, and that it expressed a certain impatience of her son as well as of his daughter; but this was one of the things which she would not see.
‘Yes,’ she said, with a little nod of her head, ‘I will answer for it, it will be just the same with Cara and you.’
Mr. Beresford gave a little snort at this of absolute dissatisfaction. ‘I don’t like changes of any kind,’ he said; ‘when we have got to be tolerably well in this dismal world, why not be content with it, and stop there! Le mieux est l’ennemi du bien. How true that is! and yet what can be better than well? I dislike changes, and this almost more than any other. I foresee it will bring me a thousand troubles—not to you, I hope,’ he said, his voice slightly faltering; ‘it would be unbearable indeed if it brought any trouble to you.’
‘Cara cannot bring any trouble to me,’ she said brightly; ‘of that I am sure enough: you are making a ghost of the dearest child. By-and-by you will see how sweet she is and how good.’