“But he won’t tell me, I know.”
“What I said—”
“Sly rogue that he is, with his eyes fixed upon you—so I understood you to say—all the time that you—even you—are talking. How great a portion of his time he—”
“Mr. Whacker, you are too absurd for anything!”
“However,” said I, unwilling to tease her further, though I saw what delight it gave her mother and Mary to see Alice put, for once, on the defensive, “you do my friend injustice. I assure you that, seated quietly in the Elmington sitting-room, before a bright winter fire, alone with my grandfather and me, Charley is capable of becoming a veritable chatterbox. When he is in the vein, there seems to be no end to the stream of his quaint, subdued humor. He reminds me of the waters of a cistern, deep, quiet, unobtrusive, but there when needed,—not of a brook that goes babbling sweetly forever.”
“For example,” said Mrs. Carter, nodding towards Alice.
“I wish you would persuade him to do some babbling for us,” said she.
“And you, meanwhile?”
“Ah,” said her mother, “she would be able then to enjoy the luxury of what Sydney Smith called an occasional flash of silence.”