to listen as they were passing. I was running up the breadths of my new frock, a blue print, which was as bright and pretty as the day, and, to tell the truth, did not care in the least what the voices were saying on the other side of the folding doors. I had made noise enough to demonstrate my presence, and, as nothing was ever hid from me, it never came into my head to listen. It was Spicer the grocer’s voice, I think, which attracted my ear at last. It was a strange, little, harsh, snappish voice, so unharmonious that it worried one like a dog barking; and by degrees, as he talked and talked, some sort of vague association came into my mind--something which I had half forgotten. What was it I had heard about the Spicers? I could not recollect all at once. “Governessing ain’t paradise,” said Spicer, “but it’s better perhaps than other things. Marrying a man as is in poor health, and at a troublesome time o’ life--and nothing to leave to them as comes after him; that ain’t much, Mr Peveril. A woman’s best married, I allow; but marriage has consekenses, and when there’s no money----” I did not hear what my father said in reply, and indeed I did not care to hear. I was half annoyed, half amused, by Spicer’s queer little barking voice. “Forty-five, sir? no, it ain’t old--but it ain’t young neither. I’ve known many a man carried off at forty-five. Them things have all got to be considered; though for that matter twenty-five would make little difference. The thing is, here’s a young woman as has a trade she can make her living by. A man comes in, marries her right off: they have a child or two in natural course, and then he goes and dies. Nothing more natural or more common. But then you see, Mr Peveril, sir, here’s the question: what’s to become of her? And that’s the question I’ve got to consider. I’ve a family myself, and I can’t put myself in the way of having to support another man’s family; and a woman can’t go out and be a governess, it stands to reason, with two or three young uns on her hands.” My father said something here in a very earnest, low, grave voice, which really attracted my curiosity for the first time. Whatever he was saying, he was very serious about it, and his tone, though I could not hear what he said, woke me up. Perhaps he warned Spicer to talk low; but at all events I heard nothing more for some time, except the grumbling and barking of the grocer’s voice, in a much subdued tone. They seemed to argue, and Spicer seemed to yield. At last he got up to go away, and then I heard him deliver his final judgment on the matter, whatever it was, standing close to the folding doors.