"What has made you think of all these dead trivialities?" he asks in a voice more moved—or I think so—less positively steady than his has been of late; "at your age, it is more natural to look on than to look back."
"Is it?" say I, sadly, "I do not know; I seem to have such a great deal of time for thinking now; this house is so extraordinarily silent! did you never notice it?—of course it is large, and we are only two people in it, but at home it never seemed to me so deadly quiet, even when I was alone in the house."
"Were you ever alone?" he asks, with a smile. He is thinking of the noisy multitude that are connected in his memory with my father's mansion; that, during all his experience of it, have filled its rooms and passages with the hubbub of their strong-lunged jollity.
"Yes, I have been," I reply; "not often, of course! but several times, when the boys were away, and father and mother and Barbara had gone out to dinner; of course it seemed still and dumb, but not—" (shuddering a little)—"not so aggressively loudly silent as this does!"
He looks at me, with a sort of remorseful pain.
"It is very dull for you!" he says, compassionately; "shut up in endless duet, with a person treble your age! I ought to have thought of that; in a month or so, we shall be going to London, that will amuse you, will not it? and till then, is there any one that you would like to have asked here?—any friend of your own?—any companion of your own age?"
"No," reply I, despondently, staring out of the window, "I have no friends."
"The boys, then?" speaking with a sudden assurance of tone, as one that has certainly hit upon a pleasant suggestion.
I shake my head.
"I could not have Bobby and the Brat, if I would, and I would not have Algy if I could!" I reply with curt dejection.