‘I wish you were with Aunt Cherry again,’ said Edward; ‘you ought not to be left by yourself here.’
‘Oh, I must be here. It is home, and I like it—sometimes. Your mother is very kind to me; and Oswald comes and talks——’
Perhaps it was scarcely possible that Edward should resist this temptation to inquire into Oswald’s degree of favour. He was not jealous. No, he thought, he felt sure that he was not jealous; but he was always the second, and no one likes that. He felt a slight passing sting and check when she spoke of Oswald, and in spite of himself could not but feel anxious to find out what degree of intimacy existed between them.
‘Do you say this to Oswald? Does he know?’ he added.
‘I never said anything,’ said Cara, recovering herself; ‘why should I? it was nonsense. And then Oswald has so much to tell me about him—it is much more amusing than to chatter about one’s self. Don’t think me very silly, Edward. It was because you seemed to want to know about me——’
‘So I did,’ he said; ‘so I do, Cara. It was you and I that used to be the friends. Oswald was bigger, don’t you remember? It was always you and I——’
Cara made no direct reply to this representation. She even disregarded the anxious look he gave her, as he made this appeal to old recollections, of which she was not specially thinking at this moment for her part.
‘How different people are,’ she said. ‘Some people tell you about themselves; some make you talk, I don’t know how, of you. I don’t think you would have a good moral effect upon me, Edward. You make me selfish; you make me think of myself. Oswald does not ask about me. He makes me listen to him. Oh, it is very pleasant, and it must be better, I feel sure——’
‘You like it better? I am such an uninteresting fellow, Cara, not like Oswald. I prefer to hear about you——’
‘Thanks,’ she said, with a little shy glance at him, and a slight reddening which she could not explain. ‘Did you think poor Roger very rough and very strange last night? I hope you did not think badly of him. He was, perhaps, a little cross, but he is not like that always, not even often. I don’t think I ever saw him so cross before.’