Another silence followed, after which he said, ‘And I think worse of the Greek scoundrel than all the cost.’ ‘Somehow, I have no fear that he’ll come here?’ ‘You’ll have to talk over Peter, Kitty’--he always said Kitty when he meant to coax her. ‘He’ll mind you, and at all events, you don’t care about his grumbling. Tell him it’s a sudden call on me for railroad shares, or’--and here he winked knowingly--‘say, it’s going to Rome the money is, and for the Pope!’ ‘That’s an excellent thought, papa,’ said she, laughing; ‘I’ll certainly tell him the money is going to Rome, and you’ll write soon--you see with what anxiety she expects your answer.’ ‘I’ll write to-night when the house is quiet, and there’s no racket nor disturbance about me.’ Now though Kearney said this with a perfect conviction of its truth and reasonableness, it would have been very difficult for any one to say in what that racket he spoke of consisted, or wherein the quietude of even midnight was greater than that which prevailed there at noonday. Never, perhaps, were lives more completely still or monotonous than theirs. People who derive no interests from the outer world, who know nothing of what goes on in life, gradually subside into a condition in which reflection takes the place of conversation, and lose all zest and all necessity for that small talk which serves, like the changes of a game, to while away time, and by the aid of which, if we do no more, we often delude the cares and worries of existence. A kind good-morning when they met, and a few words during the day--some mention of this or that event of the farm or the labourers, and rare enough too--some little incident that happened amongst the tenants, made all the materials of their intercourse, and filled up lives which either would very freely have owned were far from unhappy. Dick, indeed, when he came home and was weather-bound for a day, did lament his sad destiny, and mutter half-intelligible nonsense of what he would not rather do than descend to such a melancholy existence; but in all his complainings he never made Kate discontented with her lot, or desire anything beyond it. ‘It’s all very well,’ he would say, ‘till you know something better.’ ‘But I want no better.’ ‘Do you mean you’d like to go through life in this fashion?’ ‘I can’t pretend to say what I may feel as I grow older; but if I could be sure to be as I am now, I could ask nothing better.’ ‘I must say, it’s a very inglorious life?’ said he, with a sneer. ‘So it is, but how many, may I ask, are there who lead glorious lives? Is there any glory in dining out, in dancing, visiting, and picnicking? Where is the great glory of the billiard-table, or the croquet-lawn? No, no, my dear Dick, the only glory that falls to the share of such humble folks as we are, is to have something to do, and to do it.’