"You never disturb me," said he; "you need not fear it. Step as you please, and do not shut the doors carefully. I see you and hear you; but without any disturbance."
Ellen found it was so. But she was an exception to the general rule; other people disturbed him, as she had one or two occasions of knowing.
Of one thing she was perfectly sure, whatever he might be doing that he saw and heard her; and equally sure, that if anything were not right, she should sooner or later hear of it. But this was a censorship Ellen rather loved than feared. In the first place, she was never misunderstood; in the second, however ironical and severe he might be to others and Ellen knew he could be both when there was occasion he never was either to her. With great plainness always, but with an equally happy choice of time and manner, he either said or looked what he wished her to understand. This happened, indeed, only about comparative trifles; to have seriously displeased him Ellen would have thought the last great evil that could fall upon her in the world.
One day Margery came into the room with a paper in her hand.
"Miss Ellen," said she in a low tone "here is Anthony Fox again he has brought another of his curious letters, that he wants to know if Miss Ellen will be so good as to write out for him once more. He says he is ashamed to trouble you so much."
Ellen was reading, comfortably ensconced in the corner of the wide sofa. She gave a glance, a most ungratified one, at the very original document in Margery's hand. Unpromising it certainly looked.
"Another! Dear me! I wonder if there isn't somebody else he could get to do it for him, Margery? I think I have had my share. You don't know what a piece of work it is to copy out one of those scrawls. It takes me ever so long, in the first place, to find out what he has written, and then to put it so that any one else can make sense of it I've got about enough of it. Don't you suppose he could find plenty of other people to do it for him?"
"I don't know, Miss Ellen; I suppose he could."
"Then ask him, do; won't you, Margery? I'm so tired of it! and this is the third one; and I've got something else to do. Ask him if there isn't somebody else he can get to do it; if there isn't, I will; tell him I am busy."
Margery withdrew, and Ellen buried herself again in her book. Anthony Fox was a poor Irishman, whose uncouth attempts at a letter Ellen had once offered to write out and make straight for him, upon hearing Margery tell of his lamenting that he could not make one fit to send home to his mother.