Now it was years and years ago since Sarah had lost her voice. It happened before my father died, when we were both comparatively young people; she had been abroad with him and caught a violent cold on her way home. She was rather proud in those days--it was before she took to knitting--and she had not forgotten then that she was once a beauty. When she saw that her voice was gone for good, Sarah gave up talking. She declared to me privately that to keep up a conversation in that hoarse horrid whisper was more than she could give in to, and though she was a very good Christian in principle she never could be resigned to that loss. At first she kept upstairs in her own room; but after my father’s death she came regularly to the drawing-room, giving everybody to understand that she was not to be spoken to. Poor dear old soul! she was as anxious to hear everything that was said to me as if she had come down off her stilts and taken part in the conversation; but you may suppose what a startling event it was to hear Sarah’s voice. I gave a jump, as was natural, and ran to her to see what had happened. “Do be cautious, Milly,” she said, fretfully, in her old whisper; for to be sure I had whisked down her ball of worsted, and caught one of her pins in my new-fashioned buttonholes. “At your age a gentlewoman should move about in a different sort of way. I am quite well, thank you. Please to go back to your occupation, and leave me to carry on mine in peace.” “But Sarah, my dear soul! you’ve got back your voice!” cried I. Sarah smiled at me, not with her pretty smile. “People who are strong are always thinking such things,” she said. “You don’t know what it is to be afflicted; go back to your business, please.” “What does she say, Miss Milly?” cried Mr. Cresswell, quite eagerly, when I went back to the table. “Oh, nothing at all; it’s all a mistake, I suppose,” said I, feeling a little nettled, “put it down all the same. I dare say it was one of those spirits we hear about nowadays. And a very useful bit of information too, which makes it all the more remarkable, for I never heard they did much good in that way. Richard Arkwright! Of all the names I ever heard, the oddest name for a Mortimer! but put it down.” Mr. Cresswell put it down as I said. “Richard Arkwright Mortimer is something more of an individual than Blank Mortimer, Esq., that’s true,” said he; “he ought to be something with that name. Begging your pardon, Miss Milly, though he was a Mortimer, he ought to have had either a profession or a trade with that name. Don’t you think now,” he said, lowering his voice, and making a sign at Sarah over his shoulder, “after having broken the ice, something more might be got out of _her_?” I shook my head at first, being angry; then I nodded as I came to myself, and at last said--it was all I could say--“We’ll see.”