“How very odd you are!” said Margaret, one afternoon, closing the volume which she had held mutely for several minutes, waiting for Richard to grasp the fact that she was reading aloud.

“I odd!” protested Richard, breaking with a jerk from one of his long reveries.  “In what way?”

“As if I could explain—­when you put the quotation suddenly, like that.”

“I didn’t intend to be abrupt.  I was curious to know.  And then the charge itself was a trifle unexpected, if you will look at it.  But never mind,” he added with a smile; “think it over, and tell me to-morrow.”

“No, I will tell you now, since you are willing to wait.”

“I wasn’t really willing to wait, but I knew if I didn’t pretend to be I should never get it out of you.”

“Very well, then; your duplicity is successful.  Richard, I was puzzled whre to begin with your oddities.”

“Begin at the beginning.”

“No, I will take the nearest.  When a young lady is affable enough to read aloud to you, the least you can do is to listen to her.  That is a deference you owe to the author, when it happens to be Hawthorne, to say nothing of the young lady.”

“But I have been listening, Margaret.  Every word!”

“Where did I leave off?”

“It was where—­where the”—­and Richard knitted his brows in the vain effort to remember—­“where the young daguerreotypist, what’s-his-name, took up his residence in the House of the Seven Gables.”

“No, sir!  You stand convicted.  It was ten pages further on.  The last words were,”—­and Margaret read from the book,—­

“‘Good-night, cousin,’ said Phoebe, strangely affected by Hepsibah’s manner.  ‘If you being to love me, I am glad.’”

“There, sir! what do you say to that?”

Richard did not say anything, but he gave a guilty start, and shot a rapid glance at Margaret coolly enjoying her triumph.

“In the next place,” she continued soberly, after a pause, “I think it very odd in you not to reply to me,—­oh, not now, for of course you are without a word of justification; but at other times.  Frequently, when I speak to you, you look at me so,” making a vacant little face, “and then suddenly disappear,—­I don’t mean bodily, but mentally.”

“I am no great talker at best,” said Richard with a helpless air.  “I seldom speak unless I have something to say.”

“But other people do.  I, for instance.”

“Oh, you, Margaret; that is different.  When you talk I don’t much mind what you are talking about.”

“I like a neat, delicate compliment like that!”

“What a perverse girl you are to-day!” cried Richard.  “You won’t understand me.  I mean that your words and your voice are so pleasant they make anything interesting, whether it’s important or not.”

“If no one were to speak until he had something important to communicate,” observed Margaret, “conversation in this world would come to a general stop.”  Then she added, with a little ironical smile, “Even you, Richard, wouldn’t be talking all the time.”