"Of course not; but I never was," he replied, in a respectful tone. "How long is it since you came here?"
"I came with my mother to see uncle a great many years ago, but I only came to live here last October. Uncle wanted somebody. He said it was dull."
"I should think it was. Isn't it dull for you?"
"Sometimes," said Barbara. "It isn't at all like home. That's a little house with a great many people in it—father and mother, and all my brothers and sisters, and father's pupils. And this is a big house with nobody in it."
"Till you came," said Reynold, hesitating over the little bow or glance which should have pointed his words.
"Well, there's uncle," said Barbara with a smile, "he must count for somebody. But I feel exactly like nobody when I am going in and out of all those empty rooms. You must see them to-morrow."
The clock on the chimney-piece struck, and she turned her head to look at it. "That's five minutes slow," she said.
"And the other was more than ten minutes fast."
"Yes, it gains. Do you know," said Barbara, "I always feel as if the great clock were the time, so when it fairly runs away into the future and I have to stop it, to let the world come up with it again, it seems to me almost as if I stopped my own life too."