Mary had fallen into the habit of going for her walk or her ride at five
o'clock every day, when she was not in attendance on Lady Maulevrier,
and after her walk or ride she slipped through the stable, and joined
her ancient friend. Stables and courtyard were generally empty at this
hour, the men only appearing at the sound of a big bell, which summoned
them from their snuggery when they were wanted. Most of Lady
Maulevrier's servants had arrived at that respectable stage of long
service in which fidelity is counted as a substitute for hard work.

The old man was not particularly conversational, and was apt to repeat
the same things over and over again, with a sublime unconsciousness of
being prosy; but he liked to hear Mary talk, and he listened with
seeming intelligence. He questioned her about the world outside his
cloistered life--the wars and rumours of wars--and, although the names
of the questions and the men of the day seemed utterly strange to him,
and he had to have them repeated to him again and again, he seemed to
take an intelligent interest in the stirring facts of the time, and
listened intently when Mary gave him a synopsis of her last newspaper
reading.

When the news was exhausted, Mary hit upon a more childish form of
amusement, and that was to tell the story of any novel or poem she had
been lately reading. This was so successful that in this manner Mary
related the stories of most of Shakespeare's plays; of Byron's Bride of
Abydos, and Corsair; of Keats's Lamia; of Tennyson's Idylls; and of a
heterogenous collection of poetry and romance, in all of which stories
the old man took a vivid interest.

'You are better to me than the sunshine,' he told Mary one day when she
was leaving him. 'The world grows darker when you leave me.'