When they spoke to her she seemed to hear.

At some moments she, appeared to struggle with the impulse to answer, but the momentary effort subsided into an inarticulate gurgle, and then it was noticed that for an instant the tears stood in her eyes.
"She wants to say, 'God bless you,'" said Rotha when she observed these impotent manifestations, and at such times the girl would stoop and put her lips to the forehead of the poor dear soul.
There grew to be a kind of commerce in kind between these two, destitute as the one was of nearly every channel of communication.

The hundred tricks of dumb show, the glance, the lifted brow, the touch of the hand, the smile, the kiss,--all these acquired their several meanings, and somehow they seemed to speak to the silent sufferer in a language as definite as words.

It came to be realized that this was a condition in which Mrs.Ray might live for years.
After a week, or less, they made a bed for her in a room adjoining the kitchen, and once a day they put her in a great arm-chair and wheeled her into her place by the neuk window.
"It will be more heartsome for her," said Rotha when she suggested the change; "she'll like for us to talk to her all the same that she can't answer us, poor soul." So it came about that every morning the invalid spent an hour or two in her familiar seat by the great ingle, the chair she had sat in day after day in the bygone times, before these terrible disasters had come like the breath of a plague-wind and bereft her of her powers.
"I wonder if she remembers what happened," said Willy; "do you think she has missed them--father and Ralph ?" "Why, surely," said Rotha.

"But her ears are better than her eyes.
Don't you mark how quick her breath comes sometimes when she has heard your voice outside, and how bright her eyes are, and how she tries to say, 'God bless you!' as you come up to her ?" "Yes, I think I've marked it," said Willy, "and I've seen that light in her eyes die away into a blank stare or puzzled look, as if she wanted to ask some question while she lifted them to my face." "And Laddie there, when he barks down the lonnin--haven't you seen her then--her breast heaving, the fingers of that hand of hers twitching, and the mumble of her poor lost voice, as though she'd say, 'Come, Rotha, my lass, be quick with the supper--he's here, my lass, he's back ?'" "I think you must be right in that, Rotha--that she misses Ralph," said Willy.
"She's nobbut a laal bit quieter, that's all," said Matthew Branthwaite one morning when he turned in at Shoulthwaite.