"Our nearest neighbor!" cry I, with animation, opening my eyes. "Not _really_? Well, I am rather glad! Only yesterday I was asking Sir Roger whether there were many young people about. And _how_ near are you? _Very_ near?" "About as near as I well can be," answers he, dryly. "My lodge exactly faces yours." "Too close," say I, shaking my head. "We shall quarrel." "And do you mean to say," in a tone of attempted lightness that but badly disguises a good deal of hurt conceit, "that you never heard my name before?" Again I shake my head. "Never! and, what is more, I do not think I know what it is now: I suppose I did not listen very attentively, but I do not think I caught it." "And your tone says" (with a very considerable accession of huffiness) "that you are supremely indifferent as to whether you _ever_ catch it." I laugh. "_Catch_ it! you talk as if it were a _disease_. Well" (speaking demurely), "perhaps on the whole it _would_ be more convenient if I were to know it." Silence. "Well! what is it?" No answer. "I shall have to ask at your lodge!" "Who _can_ pronounce his _own_ name in cold blood?" he says, reddening a little. "I, for one, cannot--there--if you do not mind looking at this card--" He takes one out of his pocket, and I stop--we are slowly strolling back--under a lamp, to read it: MR. FRANCIS MUSGRAVE, MUSGRAVE ABBEY. "Oh, thanks--_Musgrave_--yes." "And Sir Roger has never mentioned me to you _really_?" he says, recurring with persistent hurt vanity to the topic. "How very odd of him!" "Not in the least odd!" reply I, brusquely. "Why should he? He knew that I was not aware of your existence, and that therefore you would not be a very interesting subject to me; no doubt"--(smiling a little)--"I shall hear all about you from him now." He is silent. "And do you live _here_ at this abbey"--(pointing to the card I still hold in my hand)--"_all by yourself_?" "Do you mean without a _wife_?" he asks, with a half-sneering smile. "Yes--I have that misfortune." "I was not thinking of a _wife_," say I, rather angrily. "It never occurred to me that you could have one! you are too young--a great deal too young!" "_Too young_, am I? At what age, then, may one be supposed to deserve that blessing? forty? fifty? sixty?" I feel rather offended, but cannot exactly grasp in my own mind the ground of offense. "I meant, of course, had you any father? any mother?" "Neither. I am that most affecting spectacle--an orphan-boy." "You have no brothers and sisters, I am _sure_," say I, confidently. "I have not, but why you should be _sure_ of it, I am at a loss to imagine." "You seem to take offense rather easily," I say, ingenuously. "You looked quite cross when I said I did not think much of the flowers--and again when I said I had forgotten your name--and again when I told you, you were too young to have a wife: now, you know, in a large family, one has all that sort of nonsense knocked out of one."