The girl had a remarkably smart and fluent utterance, which was
probably a cause, or a consequence, of her vocation.

''Tis the same story, then?' said grandmother Martin.

'Yes. Eaten out with listlessness. She's neither sick nor sorry,
but how dull and dreary she is, only herself can tell. When I get
there in the morning, there she is sitting up in bed, for my lady
don't care to get up; and then she makes me bring this book and that
book, till the bed is heaped up with immense volumes that half bury
her, making her look, as she leans upon her elbow, like the stoning
of Stephen. She yawns; then she looks towards the tall glass; then
she looks out at the weather, mooning her great black eyes, and
fixing them on the sky as if they stuck there, while my tongue goes
flick-flack along, a hundred and fifty words a minute; then she
looks at the clock; then she asks me what I've been reading.'

'Ah, poor soul!' said granny. 'No doubt she says in the morning,
"Would God it were evening," and in the evening, "Would God it were
morning," like the disobedient woman in Deuteronomy.'

Swithin, in the room overhead, had suspended his calculations, for
the duologue interested him. There now crunched heavier steps
outside the door, and his grandmother could be heard greeting sundry
local representatives of the bass and tenor voice, who lent a
cheerful and well-known personality to the names Sammy Blore, Nat
Chapman, Hezekiah Biles, and Haymoss Fry (the latter being one with
whom the reader has already a distant acquaintance); besides these
came small producers of treble, who had not yet developed into such
distinctive units of society as to require particularizing.