who was ten years younger, and accustomed to be treated as a baby. Prudence wore a fringe that hung over her eyes in separate snaky curls, and in damp weather degenerated into wisps; she was plump and fair, had a somewhat foolish smile, and, as befitted her part of giddy, little thing, any number of coquettish airs and graces.

Their neighbours were, a stately couple named Mr. and Mrs. Dumaresq, Mr. Lorimer, a clownish youth, of good family and 10aggressive patriotism, Major Jones, Mrs. Whitley, a small, mincing lady of recent and painful refinement, and finally a large and commanding woman with a terrible eye, who was vaguely believed to have taken out a medical degree.

10

“For what we are about to receive,” said Mrs. Wilcox, “the Lord make us truly thankful.”

With a creak and a rustle, some five-and-thirty boarders drew in their chairs. The covers were removed, and a ripple of prosy talk began.

As usual, it started with polite enquiries as to each other’s health. In boarding-houses it generally does. No one cares a button for you or your ailments, but they ask after them all the same with exasperating regularity and take no interest in the answer.

“How is your cold, Major Jones?”

“Better, thank you, Mrs. Dumaresq—and your neuralgia?”

“Much worse; I never closed my eyes last night.”

“But you are taking something for it?”—and so on, and so on, and so on.

New comers at 37, Beaconsfield Gardens, occasionally tried to be conversational. For 11a time they were lively, animated, full of good stories and repartee. People listened to them in silence, and generally took offence. Conversation as a fine art was not encouraged. It was sad to notice how in a week or a fortnight the talkers talked themselves out, and subsided into the brief commonplaces of their neighbours.

11

The boarders, all respectable people who read the Daily Telegraph and voted Tory when they had votes, shared the profound belief of the middle-class Briton that silence shows solidity, 

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