“And you want them to send you back to the convent?”
“Yes.”
“I think that would be a pity.”
“You didn’t last time.”
“No-o,” said Dick, clearing his throat. “Perhaps I didn’t see it quite so well then. You see I hadn’t thought about it. But I have since; and there’s a lot in what you said about the selfishness of it.”
“Ah, but now I’m just in the only position in the world in which it isn’t selfish. I am quite alone, you see.”
“So you were a week ago.”
“But I had some hope then that I might be able to do some good. Now I haven’t. And you don’t know what it is to be always lonely, to have nobody to speak to even. It makes one feel like an outcast from all the world.”
“Yes, so it does. So that one is glad of the very mice that run behind the wainscot; and when one of the little brutes comes out of its hole and runs about the room, why one wouldn’t disturb it for the world.”
“Oh, yes, I love the mice. Do you know I expect that sometimes when I have listened to a scratching in the wall and thought it was mice, it was really you all the time!”