He smiled thoughtfully.
"Talk much with Mrs. Leeth?"
"Oh, yes—she seems much more ordinary than her eyes, doesn't she?"
"What did she say?"
"Oh, just commonplaces—I don't recall anything special...."
"Well, try, won't you? What were the commonplaces?"
I applied myself to recollection. What, after all, had she said? As a matter of fact, beyond her linen tabulation I could not recall more than a dozen words.
"Anyway," I remonstrated, "she makes you feel as if she talked! She doesn't seem silent."
"No," he admitted thoughtfully, "that's true. But she never talks. She hardly speaks to the servants—they're all under her, you know—but they all seem to know what she wants. I've tested lots of them: the cook, the laundresses, the furnace man, the steward—and when they come to consider, they can't recall a dozen words a day. But they always insist, at first, that she gives them detailed orders and criticises them constantly. It's funny."
"Oh, well," I broke in impatiently, "never mind her! Tell me about Mr. Vail—how long has he been there?"