"They never ask anybody to Blessington," says Esther, feeling the string of her tongue loosed, and experiencing, despite herself, great enjoyment in having some one to chatter to, at whom it is not necessary to bawl, and who does not answer her monosyllabically with _fade_ chilly smiles. "They are too old to care for society; like Barzillai the Gileadite, they cannot hear any more 'the voice of singing men and singing women.' They have the clergyman and his wife to dine on Christmas Day, and there their gaiety for the year begins and ends." "And yours too?" "And mine too. But I don't wish for gaiety," she answers, gravely, with an involuntary glance at her crape, which has grown very brown, and rusty, and shabby genteel. "It must be an awful fate being shut up with those two old mummies," says Linley, compassionately, his pity for Miss Craven made vivid by his personal recollections of Mrs. Blessington's conversational power. "I had rather live in a lighthouse, or sweep a crossing, by long odds." "So would I," she answers, drily, "if any one would set on foot a subscription to buy me a broom." "You have Miss Blessington now as a companion, at all events," rejoins he, glad to fix on any bright spot in his poor new acquaintance's mud-coloured life. "Yes; she is pleasant to look at." "And to talk to." "She never talks." "And Gerard? He is not particularly pleasant to look at, certainly----" "Not particularly," she assents; feeling a hot glow steal all over her, as at an insult to herself. "But when he is not in one of his sulks, as he was the other day--do you remember?--he is not a bad fellow, as fellows go." "Isn't he?" He looks at her with surprise. "Why, surely, living in the same house with him, you ought to know him, at least as well as I do?" "I never speak to him, and he never speaks to me," she answers, shortly. Linley bursts out laughing. "Good heavens! what a horrible picture you draw! You remind one of Mr. Watts's pretty little hymn-- "'Where'er I take my walks abroad How many poor I see! And as I never speaks to them They never speak to me.'" Esther laughs; but anyone listening might have heard a melancholy ring in her merriment. "Does _nobody_ speak to _anybody_ then at Blessington?" asks the young man, aghast at the state of things as revealed by his companion's answers. "Mr. Blessington roars at Mrs. Blessington, and Mrs. Blessington roars at Mr. Blessington, and I roar at them both." "And the other two--do not they speak?" "We are, none of us, much addicted to conversation," she answers, grimly; "but, _en revanche_, what we do say we say very loud." "Are you _all_ deaf, then?" "No; but when one lives with deaf people, one gets into the habit of thinking that the whole world is hard of hearing; one bawls at everyone." "What an exhausting process!" he says, with a shrug; "takes a great deal out of you, doesn't it?"