Sometimes, it is true, her impatient instinct made a keen thrust at the truth, and she would say angrily,-- "Put down that paper! I want to see your face when I speak to you;" but his reply, "Why, mother, I am reading.

I was just going to read something aloud to you," would usually disarm and divert her.

It was one of her great pleasures to have him read aloud to her.

It mattered little what he read: she was equally interested in the paragraphs of small local news, and in the telegraphic summaries of foreign affairs.

A revolt in a distant European province, of which she had never heard even the name, was neither more nor less exciting to her than the running away of a heifer from the premises of an unknown townsman.
All through the evening, the sounds of moving of furniture, and brisk going up and down stairs, came through the partition, and interrupted Stephen's thoughts as much as they did his mother's.