he-bye"--observed the Carrier--"that old gentleman----"

Again so visibly and instantly embarrassed!

"He's an odd fish," said the Carrier, looking straight along the road
before them. "I can't make him out. I don't believe there's any harm in
him."

"None at all. I'm--I'm sure there's none at all."

"Yes," said the Carrier, with his eyes attracted to her face by the
great earnestness of her manner. "I am glad you feel so certain of it,
because it's a confirmation to me. It's curious that he should have
taken it into his head to ask leave to go on lodging with us; an't it?
Things come about so strangely."

"So very strangely," she rejoined in a low voice, scarcely audible.

"However, he's a good-natured old gentleman," said John, "and pays as a
gentleman, and I think his word is to be relied upon, like a
gentleman's. I had quite a long talk with him this morning: he can hear
me better already, he says, as he gets more used to my voice. He told me
a great deal about himself, and I told him a good deal about myself, and
a rare lot of questions he asked me. I gave him information about my
having two beats, you know, in my business; one day to the right from
our house and back again; another day to the left from our house and
back again (for he's a stranger, and don't know the names of places
about here); and he seemed quite pleased. 'Why, then I shall be
returning home to-night your way,' he says, 'when I thought you'd be
coming in an exactly opposite direction. That's capital! I may trouble
you for another lift, perhaps, but I'll engage not to fall so sound
asleep again.' He _was_ sound asleep, sure-ly!--Dot! what are you
thinking of?"

"Thinking of, John? I--I was listening to you."

"Oh! That's all right!" said the honest Carrier. "I was afraid, from the
look of your face, that I had gone rambling on so long as to set you
thinking about something else. I was very near it, I'll be bound."

Dot making no reply, they jogged on, for some little time, in silence.
But, it was not easy to remain silent very long in John Peerybingle's
cart, for everybody on the road had something to say. Though it might
only be "How are you?" and, indeed, it was very often nothing else,
still, to give that back again in the right spirit of cordiality,
required, not merely a nod and a smile, but as wholesome an action of
the lungs withal as a long-winded Parliamentary speech. Sometimes,
passengers on foot, or horseback, plodded on a li