"I can introduce you to all the aurists in London, Miss Purcell, and I am sure that you will soon get as many inmates as you may choose to take. In cases where their own skill fails altogether, they would be delighted to comfort parents by telling them how their children may learn to dispense altogether with the sense of hearing."
"Not quite altogether," she said. "It has happened very often, as it did just now, that I have been addressed by someone at whom I did not happen to be looking, and then I have to explain my apparent rudeness by owning myself to be entirely deaf. Unfortunately, I have not always been able to make people believe it, and I have several times been soundly rated by strangers for endeavoring to excuse my rudeness by a palpable falsehood."
"Really, I am hardly surprised," Dr. Leeds said, "for I should myself have found it difficult to believe that one altogether deaf could have been taught to join in conversation as you do. Well, I must be very careful what I say in future while in the society of two young ladies possessed of such dangerous and exceptional powers."
"You need not be afraid, doctor; I feel sure that there is no one here to whom you would venture to give us a bad character."
"I think," he went on more seriously, "that Miss Covington's mother was very wise in warning her against her letting anyone know that she could read conversations at a distance. People would certainly be afraid of her, for gossipmongers would be convinced that she was overhearing, if I may use the word, what was said, if she happened to look at them only casually."
At the end of three months the General became restless, and was constantly expressing a wish to be brought back to London.
"What do you think yourself, Dr. Leeds?" Dr. Pearson said, when he paid one of his usual visits.
"He is, of course, a great deal better than he was when he first came down," the former replied, "but there is still that curious hesitation in his speech, as if he was suffering from partial paralysis. I am not surprised at his wanting to get up to town again. As he improves in health he naturally feels more and more the loss of his usual course of life. I should certainly have advised his remaining here until he had made a good deal further advancement, but as he has set his mind upon it, I believe that more harm would be done by refusing than by his going. In fact, I think that he has, if anything, gone back in the last fortnight, and above all things it is necessary to avoid any course that might cause irritation, and so set up fresh brain disturbances."
"I am quite of your opinion, Leeds. I have noticed myself that he hesitates more than he did a short time since, and sometimes, instead of joining in the conversation, he sits moody and silent; and he is beginning to resent being looked after and checked."