eyelids, lent
little charm to his peculiar cast of countenance.

"Well! Will nobody answer? Who yawned so loudly behind my back just
now?" he asked again, with an angry snort. "Will nobody answer?"

Nobody answered, and yet there was a sufficient number of people in the
room to have found an answer between them. In front of the hearth was
sitting a young woman about thirty or thirty-five, with just such a
strongly-pronounced pointed nose, with just such high raised eyebrows as
the old gentleman's, only her face was still red (though the favour of
Nature had not much to do with that perhaps) and her eyebrows were still
black; but her thin lips were just as hermetically sealed as the old
man's, when she was not speaking. This young woman was playing at
Patience.

In one of the windows sat a young girl of sixteen, a delicate creature
of rapid growth, whose every limb and feature seemed preternaturally
thin and fragile. She was occupied with some sort of sewing. At another
little sewing-table, immediately opposite to her, was a red-cheeked
damsel with a frightful mop of light hair and a figure which had all the
possibilities of stoutness before it. She was a sort of governess, and
was supposed to be English, though they had only her word for it. She
was reading a book.

On the silk ottoman behind lay the already-mentioned Clementina, who
ought to have confessed to the sin of yawning. She was a spinster
already far advanced in the afternoon of life, and had cinder-coloured
ringlets around her temples and a little bit of beard on her chin. She
was no blood relation of the family but, as an ancient companion to a
former mistress of the house, had long eaten the bread of charity under
that roof. She was now engaged upon some eye-tormenting, fine fancy
work which could not have afforded the poor creature very much
amusement.

The old gentleman on the sofa used to divert himself the whole day by
assembling as many human beings around him as possible and driving them
to desperation by his unendurable nagging and chiding; they, on the
other hand, had by this time discovered that the best defence against
this domestic visitation was never to answer so much as a word.

"Of course! Of course!" continued the old gentleman with stinging
sarcasm. "I know what a bore it is to be near me and about me. I see
through it all. Yes, I _know_ that I am an unendurable old fellow on
whom not a single word should be wasted. I know well enou