her employer--I am not in a position to say, for I am only temporarily
a lodger in the house where Millie helps, and she doesn't help me
much. But to-day I have made her hear and understand one whole
sentence. It is the first time during the six days that we have known
each other that I have conveyed anything to her except by graphic
gesticulation and grimace.

I accepted the fact at the outset that my soft and seductive tones
could never penetrate Millie's stone-deafness. Only the loudest and
angriest remarks are audible to Millie, so I preserve an attitude of
silent facial amiability in all my relations with her.

BALAAM could not have looked more surprised than did Millie this
evening when, in the act of clearing away my latest meal, she heard
me say, "Leave the matches."

She stopped dead and looked at me over the tray of dirty crockery. Her
expression was not unfriendly.

"But I got t' look after myself," she explained; "I'd be all done up
if I hadn't they matches in the morning to light the fire and all. You
wouldn't get no bath-water."

"I want to smoke," I said obstinately.

She kept her hand over the box of matches. She had not heard. I made
intelligent signs illustrative of the lighting of a cigarette. Millie
told me, in pure Cornish:

"You can only get a box at a time now, and half-a-pound o' sugar I