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 "At first you see I was quite strange to it, I didn't understand completely. Mr. Roope is a little deaf, but he says he hears as much as he wants to &hellip; so beautifully content and devout."

"Has Mrs. Roope any defect?" Margaret got a word or two in edgeways before the end of the evening, her sense of humour helping her.

"She has a sort of hysterical affection. She goes 'Bupp, bupp,' like a turkey-cock and swells at the throat. At least that is what I thought, but I am very backward at present. Some one asked her the cause once, when I was there, and she said she had no such habit, the mistake was ours. It is all very bewildering."

"Are there any other members of the family?"

"Her dear mother! Such a nice creature, and quite a believer; she has gall-stones."

"Gall-stones!"

"Not really, you know, they pass with prayer. She looks ill, very ill sometimes, but of course that is another of my mistakes. I am having absent treatment now."

"They know where you are?" Gabriel asked, perhaps a little anxiously.

"Oh! dear, yes. I am never out of touch with them."

After she had retired for the night, for notwithstanding her immunity from fatigue and pain, she retired early, explaining that she wanted to put her