Mrs. Reffold was not the only sinner in this respect.  It would have been interesting to get together a tea-party of invalids alone, and set the ball rolling about the respective behaviours of their respective friends.  Not a pleasing chronicle:  no very choice pages to add to the book of real life; still, valuable items in their way, representative of the actual as opposed to the ideal.  In most instances there would have been ample testimony to that cruel monster, known as Neglect.

Bernardine spoke once to the Disagreeable Man on this subject.  She spoke with indignation, and he answered with indifference, shrugging his shoulders.

“These things occur,” he said “It is not that they are worse here than everywhere else; it is simply that they are together in an accumulated mass, and, as such, strike us with tremendous force.  I myself am accustomed to these exhibitions of selfishness and neglect.  I should be astonished if they did not take place.  Don’t mix yourself up with anything.  If people are neglected, they are neglected, and there is the end of it.  To imagine that you or I are going to do any good by filling up the breach, is simply an insanity leading to unnecessarily disagreeable consequences.  I know you go to see Mr. Reffold.  Take my advice, and keep away.”

“You speak like a Calvinist,” she answered, rather ruffled, “with the quintessence of self-protectiveness; and I don’t believe you mean a word you say.”

“My dear young woman,” he said, “we are not living in a poetry book bound with gilt edges.  We are living in a paper-backed volume of prose.  Be sensible.  Don’t ruffle yourself on account of other people.  Don’t even trouble to criticize them; it is only a nuisance to yourself.  All this simply points back to my first suggestion:  fill up your time with some hobby, cheese-mites or the influenza bacillus, and then you will be quite content to let people be neglected, lonely, and to die.  You will look upon it as an ordinary and natural process.”

She waved her hand as though to stop him.

“There are days,” she said, “when I can’t bear to talk with you.  And this is one of them.”

“I am sorry,” he answered, quite gently for him.  And he moved away from her, and started for his usual lonely walk.

Bernardine turned home, intending to go to see Mr. Reffold.  He had become quite attached to her, and looked forward eagerly to her visits.  He said her voice was gentle and her manner quiet; there was no bustling vitality about het to irritate his worn nerves.  He was probably an empty-headed, stupid fellow; but it was none the less sad to see him passing away.

He called her ‘Little Brick.’  He said that no other epithet suited her so exactly.  He was quite satisfied now that she was not paid for coming to see him.  As for the reading, no one could read the Sporting and Dramatic News and the Era so well as Little Brick.  Sometimes he spoke with her about his wife, but only in general terms of bitterness, and not always complainingly.  She listened and said nothing.