ther word all sat down. They ate in silence, and the old
butler thought 'That 'addick ain't what it was; but a beautiful cup o'
tea. He don't eat nothing; he's more ameniable to reason than I
expected. There's no one won't be too pleased to see him now!'

His eyes, travelling to the spot from which the bayonet had been removed,
rested on the print of the Nativity. "'Suffer little children to come
unto Me,'" he thought, "'and forbid them not." He'll be glad to hear
there was two carriages followed him home.'

And, taking his time, he cleared his throat in preparation for speech.
But before the singular muteness of this family sounds would not come.
Finishing his tea, he tremblingly arose. Things that he might have said
jostled in his mind. 'Very pleased to 'a seen you. Hope you're in good
health at the present time of speaking. Don't let me intrude on you.
We've all a-got to die some time or other!' They remained unuttered.
Making a vague movement of his skinny hand, he walked feebly but quickly
to the door. When he stood but half-way within the room, he made his
final effort.

"I'm not a-goin' to say nothing," he said; "that'd be superlative! I
wish you a good-morning."

Outside he waited a second, then grasped the banister.

'For all he sets so quiet, they've done him no good in that place,' he
thought. 'Them eyes of his!' And slowly he descended, full of a sort of
very deep surprise. 'I misjudged of him,' he was thinking; 'he never was
nothing but a 'armless human being. We all has our predijuices--I
misjudged of him. They've broke his 'eart between 'em--that they have.'

The silence in the room continued after his departure. But when the
little boy had gone to school, Hughs rose and lay down on the bed. He
rested there, unmoving, with his face towards the wall, his arms clasped
round his head to comfort it. The seamstress, stealing about her
avocations, paused now and then to look at him. If he had raged at her,
if he had raged at everything, it would not have been so terrifying as
this utter silence, which passed her comprehension--this silence as of a
man flung by the sea against a rock, and pinned there with the life
crushed out of him. All her inarticulate longing, now that her baby was
gone, to be close to something in her grey life, to pass the
unfranchisable barrier dividing her from the world, seemed to well up, to
flow against this wall of silence and to recoil.

Twice or three times