, papa!«
    He repeated it in the profoundest manner: »Sirius! And is there,« he asked,
»a feminine scintilla of sense in that?«
    »It is the name of the star I was thinking of, dear papa.«
    »It was the star observed by King Agamemnon before the sacrifice in Aulis.
You were thinking of that? But, my love, my Iphigeneia, you have not a father
who will insist on sacrificing you.«
    »Did I hear him tell you to humour me, papa?«
    Dr. Middleton humphed.
    »Verily the dog-star rages in many heads,« he responded.
 

                                  Chapter XLIV

           Dr. Middleton: The Ladies Eleanor and Isabel: and Mr. Dale

Clara looked up at the flying clouds. She travelled with them now, and tasted
freedom, but she prudently fore-bore to vex her father; she held herself in
reserve.
    They were summoned by the mid-day bell.
    Few were speakers at the meal, few were eaters. Clara was impelled to join
it by her desire to study Mrs. Mountstuart's face. Willoughby was obliged to
preside. It was a meal of an assembly of mutes and plates, that struck the ear
like the well-known sound of a collection of offerings in church after an
impressive exhortation from the pulpit. A sally of Colonel De Craye's met the
reception given to a charity-boy's muffled burst of animal spirits in the
silence of the sacred edifice. Willoughby tried politics with Dr. Middleton,
whose regular appetite preserved him from uncongenial speculations when the hour
for appeasing it had come; and he alone did honour to the dishes, replying to
his host:
    »Times are bad, you say, and we have a Ministry doing with us what they
will. Well, sir, and that being so, and opposition a manner of kicking them into
greater stability, it is the time for wise men to retire within themselves, with
the steady determination of the seed in the earth to grow. Repose upon nature,
sleep in firm faith, and abide the seasons. That is my counsel to the weaker
party.«
    The counsel was excellent, but it killed the topic.
    Dr. Middleton's appetite was watched for the signal to rise and breathe
freely; and such is the grace accorded to a good man of an untroubled conscience
engaged in doing his duty to himself, that he perceived nothing of the general
restlessness; he went through the dishes calmly, and as calmly he quoted Milton
to the ladies Eleanor and Isabel, when the