The English officer smiled back from under his shaggy brows, and sank into the great chair with a sigh of genuine comfort. Cary drew up a chair and sat down near him.
"Papa is out," she said. "He has only just gone, too. I’m so sorry. If you care to wait—and perhaps later let me give you a cup of tea—" she went on with a certain charming spontaneity, "John says my tea is almost like the tea the English girls make—" she questioned Trevelyan’s father with her laughing eyes.
"And what does my boy say about your tea?" asked the English officer, watching her curiously.
"Robert? Oh, Robert never says anything nice about it. He never says nice things to me anyway," Cary pouted. "But I notice he nearly always drinks three cups when he comes and after all I believe that counts for a good deal—don’t you?"
"Undoubtedly—for a good deal of tea! And does he often come to drink it with you?"
The old British officer drew patterns on the floor with his cane and was silent.
Cary looked at him stealthily from under her long lashes. She had only met Trevelyan’s father when he had called formally on their coming to England, or sometimes when he stopped by to take the Captain to drive, and once at the Stewarts’, at dinner. He had always inspired her with a certain awe. It might have been his lameness which Cary was wont to regard as a badge of an honor legion, or simply his brusque manner, not unlike his son’s, but lacking much of his son’s odd charm. She sometimes had fancied she had seen a physical likeness between them, and once she had caught herself wondering if the father had looked like the son in his youth and if the son would resemble more closely the father in age. She patted thoughtfully the arm of her chair.
"Papa will be so sorry to miss you," she began.
Trevelyan’s father leaned forward. He suddenly stopped drawing patterns on the floor with his cane.
"I did not come to see your father," he said, "I came especially when I knew he was out and you were in. I am calling on you." He smiled grimly, forcing the boy’s face from his mind.
Cary stared. Then she recovered herself. "Yes?" she said politely.
The old officer sat up very straight grasping his cane, and then he led direct to the object of his visit, as he had led direct his famous charge into the center of the enemy’s lines, on the heights of Inkerman, way back in ’54.