 would find anything to eat. But how do you show your terrors, I should like to know? Do you scream?”

“I never screamed in my life, as far as I remember. Screaming appears to me the most unnatural of human sounds. I never felt the slightest inclination to express myself in that manner.”

“Nor I: but I never said so, because I thought no one would believe me.”

“No: the true mood for these doleful winter nights is, to sit trying to read, but never able to fix your attention for five minutes, for some odd noise or another. And yet it is almost worse to hear nothing but a cinder falling on the hearth now and then, startling you like a pistol-shot. Then it seems as if somebody was opening the shutter outside, and then tapping at the window. I have got so into the habit of looking at the window at night, expecting to see a face squeezed flat against the pane, that I have yielded up my credit to myself, and actually have the blinds drawn down when the outside shutters are closed.”

“How glad I am to find you are no braver than the rest of us!”

“No; do not be glad. It is very painful, night after night. Every step clinks or craunches in the farrier’s yard, you know. This ought to be a comfort: but sometimes I cannot clearly tell where the sound comes from. More than once lately I have fancied it was behind me, and have turned round in a greater hurry than you would think I could use. My rooms are a good way from the rest of the house; you remember the length of the passage between. I do not like disturbing the family in the evenings; but I have been selfish enough to ring, once or twice this week, without any sufficient reason, just for the sake of a sight of my landlady.”

“A very sufficient reason. But I had no idea of all this from you.”

“You have heard me say some fine things about the value of time to me—about the blessings of my long evenings. For all that (true as it is), I have got into the way of going to bed soon after ten, just because I know every one else in the house is in bed, and I do not like to be the only person up.”

“That is the reason why you are looking so well, notwithstanding all these terrors. But, Maria, what has become of your bravery?”

“It is just where it was. I
