"You see, miss, I couldn't say to the minute when Mr. Powell would be back, but between four and five he generally do come in, and I make him swallow a cup of herb tea, or something. And I will not deny that I sometimes puts a pinch of China tea in. But he don't know. This is but a poor place, miss," added the widow, glancing round, "but so long as you can make yourself content to stay in it, so long you will be welcome as the flowers in May, if 'twas to be for a twelvemonth?" Then Minnie praised the brilliant cleanliness of the little kitchen, took notice of the cat that rubbed its velvet head confidingly against her hand, and asked Mrs. Thimbleby how she prospered in her lodging-letting. The widow was loquacious in her mild slow way; and she was pleased at this opportunity for a little harmless gossip. It was a propensity which received frequent checks from those around her. Mr. Diamond was too taciturn, too grave, too much absorbed in his books, to give any heed to his landlady's conversation, beyond listening to the few particulars of his weekly expenses, which she insisted on explaining to him. Mrs. Errington, on the other hand, was not at all taciturn, but she desired to have the talk chiefly to herself. She loved to harangue Mrs. Thimbleby on a variety of subjects, and to place, in vivid colours before her, the inadequacy of all her domestic arrangements to satisfy a lady of Mrs. Errington's quality. As to gossiping with David Powell, Mrs. Thimbleby would as soon have thought of attempting to gossip with the sculptured figure of a saint, which stood in a niche at one side of the portal of St. Chad's! So the good woman, finding Miss Bodkin more compliant and affable than the two first-named of her lodgers, and nearer to the level of common humanity than the last, indulged herself with an outpouring of chat, as the two sat waiting for Powell's return. Minnie listened to her at first with but a drowsy kind of attention. Her own thoughts were wandering away from the present time and place. And, for a while, the quiet of the room, where the gathering twilight seemed to bring a deeper hush, was only broken by the monotonous murmur of the widow's voice. But by-and-by Mrs. Thimbleby spoke words which effectually aroused Minnie's attention.