"Perhaps," replies the Professor of Scientific Economy; "a deaf person can gain no information from conversation." "Who does?" asks Bella, pertly. "Who finds mushrooms in a field?" asks Chilvern, who has been engaged in this lately. "Give it up," says Milburd. That's the worst of Milburd, when a conversation is beginning to promise some results, he nips it in the bud with the frost of his nonsense. Bella asks what Mr. Chilvern was going to say. He has nearly forgotten, but recalls it to his mind, on Cazell repeating the word mushrooms. "Ah, yes," says Chilvern, evidently feeling that the brilliancy of his simile has been taken off by the interruption. "I was going to say _à propos_ of Miss Bella's remark about no one gaining any information from conversation----" "I didn't say _that_, Mr. Chilvern." No, of course not. We all side with Miss Bella. Chilvern nowhere. "Ah, well," he says, "I thought you did." "And if I had?" asks Miss Bella, triumphantly. "Eh!--well, if you _had_--" Chilvern meditates, and then answers, "--if you had, why then I was going to say that ...." here he breaks off and finishes, "--well, it doesn't matter now, but it _was_ very good when I first thought of it." He disappears, _i.e._, from a conversational point of view, in our laughter. He is extinguished. "What's he saying?" asks Mrs. Boodels. Milburd takes up the trumpet. "He says," shouts Milburd, it being quite unnecessary to shout, "that he's a very clever fellow." "Ah," says Mrs. Boodels. "Mr. Chilvern's always joking." "I never said anything of the sort," says the injured Chilvern to her, defending himself through the ear-trumpet. "Ah," observes Mrs. Boodels, perfectly satisfied. "I was sure he never could have said that." Then she considers for a few seconds. After this she remarks, "Cleverness, is not one of his strong points." Whereupon she smiles amiably. Chilvern walks to the window. "We were saying," says the Professor, who evidently has a whole three-volume lecture ready for us, "that deaf people are happy. Now I controvert that opinion. To be deaf, is not a blessing." "Then," says Milburd, "a person who is deaf, is not a blessed old man, or old woman, as the case may be." "You misapprehend me, my dear Milburd. What I would say about deafness, is this--" (_exit BELLA, quietly_,)--"is this--that the loss of the sense of hearing----" "Is seldom the loss of hearing sense," interrupts Boodels, at the door. [_Exit BOODELS._ "To a certain extent," continues the Professor, who has Milburd, now, as it were, in his grasp. "Boodels, although putting it lightly, was right. Sense is uncommon--" "'Specially common sense," I observe. Being my first remark for some time. But I like the Professor; and his philosophic views have an interest for me that they evidently do not possess for natures which will be always butterflying about.