‘I wish Diana or Mary would come and live with you: it is too bad that you should be quite alone; and you are recklessly rash about your own health.’
‘Not at all,’ said he: ‘I care for myself when necessary. I am well now. What do you see amiss in me?’
This was said with a careless, abstracted indifference, which showed that my solicitude was, at least in his opinion, wholly superfluous. I was silenced.
He still slowly moved his finger over his upper lip, and still his eye dwelt dreamily on the glowing grate; thinking it urgent to say something, I asked him presently if he felt any cold draught from the door, which was behind him.
‘No, no!’ he responded shortly and somewhat testily.
Well,’ I reflected, ‘if you won’t talk, you may be still; I’ll let you alone now, and return to my book.’
So I snuffed the candle and resumed the perusal of ‘Marmion.’ He soon stirred; my eye was instantly drawn to his movements; he only took out a morocco pocket-book, thence produced a letter, which he read in silence, folded it, put it back, relapsed into meditation. It was vain to try to read with such an inscrutable fixture before me; nor could I, in impatience, consent to be dumb; he might rebuff me if my he liked, but talk I would.
‘Have you heard from Diana and Mary lately?’
‘Not since the letter I showed you a week ago.’
‘There has not been any change made about your own arrangements? You will not be summoned to leave England sooner than you expected?’
‘I fear not, indeed: such chance is too good to befall me.’ Baffled so far, I changed my ground. I bethought myself to talk about the school and my scholars.
‘Mary Garrett’s mother is better, and Mary came back to the school this morning, and I shall have four new girls next week from the Foundry Close—they would have come to-day but for the snow.’
‘Indeed!’
‘Mr. Oliver pays for two.’
‘Does he?’
‘He means to give the whole school a treat at Christmas.’
‘I know.’
‘Was it your suggestion?’
‘No.’
‘Whose, then?’
‘His daughter’s, I think.’
‘It is like her: she is so good-natured.’
‘Yes.’
Again came the blank of a pause: the clock struck eight strokes. It aroused him; he uncrossed his legs, sat erect, turned to me.
‘Leave your book a moment, and come a little nearer the f ire,’ he said.
Wondering, and of my wonder finding no end, I complied.
‘Half-an-hour ago,’ he pursued, ‘I spoke of my impatience to hear the sequel of a tale: on reflection, I find the matter will be better managed by my assuming the narrator’s part,and converting you into a listener. Before commencing, it is but fair to warn you that the story will sound somewhat hackneyed in your ears; but stale details often regain a degree of freshness when they pass through new lips. For the rest, whether trite or novel, it is short.
