Valentine was standing near, but he did not appear to hear this speech. He was watching the scene before him closely and curiously. Accustomed as he was to the innocent candor with which the deaf and dumb girl always showed her approval or dislike of strangers at a first interview--as also to her apparent perversity in often displaying a decided liking for the very people whose looks and manners had been previously considered certain to displease her--he was now almost as much surprised as Zack, when he witnessed her reception of Mat. It was an infallible sign of Madonna’s approval, if she followed up an introduction by handing her slate of her own accord to a stranger. When she was presented to people whom she disliked, she invariably kept it by her side until it was formally asked for. Eccentric in everything else, Mat was consistently eccentric even in his confusion. Some men who are bashful in a young lady’s presence show it by blushing--Mat’s color sank instead of rising. Other men, similarly affected, betray their burdensome modesty by fidgeting incessantly.--Mat was as still as a statue. His eyes wandered heavily and vacantly over the girl, beginning with her soft brown hair, then resting for a moment on her face, then descending to the gay pink ribbon on her breast, and to her crisp black silk apron with its smart lace pockets--then dropping at last to her neat little shoes, and to the thin bright line of white stocking that just separated them from the hem of her favorite grey dress. He only looked up again, when she touched his hand and put her slate pencil into it. At that signal he raised his eyes once more, read the line she had written to thank him for the scarlet pouch, and tried to write something in return. But his hand shook, and his thoughts seemed to fail him, he gave her back the slate and pencil, looking her full in the eyes as he did so. A curious change came over his face at the same time--a change like that which had altered him so remarkably in the hosier’s shop at Dibbledean. “Zack might, after all, have made many a worse friend than this man,” thought Mr. Blyth, still attentively observing Mat. “Vagabonds don’t behave in the presence of young girls as he is behaving now.” With this idea in his mind, Valentine advanced to help his guest by showing Mat how to communicate with Madonna. The painter was interrupted, however, by young Thorpe, who, the moment he recovered from his first sensations of surprise began to talk nonsense again, at the top of his voice, with the mischievous intention of increasing Mat’s embarrassment.