They are talking low and quickly, and looking smilingly at each other.

When does his face ever light up into such alert animation when he is talking to me?
There can be no doubt of it! Why blink a thing because it is unpleasant?
I _bore him_.
I have no intention of listening, and yet I hear some of their words--enough to teach me the drift of their talk.

"Residency!" "Cawnpore!" "Simlah!" "_Cursed_ Simlah!" "_Cursed_ Cawnpore!" My attention is recalled by the voice of my old neighbor.
"Talking of that--" he says--( talking of _what_, in Heaven's name ?)--"I once knew a man--a doctor, at Norwich--who did not marry till he was seventy-eight, and had four as fine children as any man need wish to see." By the extraordinary irrelevancy of this anecdote, I am so taken aback that, for a moment, I am unable to utter.

Seeing, however, that some comment is expected from me, I stammer something about its being a great age.

He, however, imagines that I am asking whether they were boys or girls.
"Three boys and a girl, or three girls and a boy!" he answers, with loud distinctness--"I cannot recollect which; but, after all--" (with an acrid chuckle)--"that is not the point of the story!" I sink back in my chair, with a slight shiver.
"Give it up!" says my other neighbor, with a compassionate smile, and speaking in a voice not a whit lower than usual--"_I_ would!--it really is no good!" "Why does not he have a _trumpet_ ?" ask I, with a slight accent of irritation, for I have suffered much, and it is hot.
"He had one once," replies my companion, still pityingly regarding the flushed discomposure of my face; "but people _would_ insist on bawling so loudly down it, that they nearly broke the drum of his ear, and so _he_ broke _it_." I laugh a little, but in a puny way.