"Any thing will do for me," he thought.

"Suppose I 'chaff' her a little about her slate ?" He called to the woman across the pear-trees.

"Hullo!" The woman raised herself, and advanced toward him slowly--looking at him, as she came on, with the sunken eyes, the sorrow-stricken face, the stony tranquillity of Hester Dethridge.
Geoffrey was staggered.

He had not bargained for exchanging the dullest producible vulgarities of human speech (called in the language of slang, "Chaff") with such a woman as this.
"What's that slate for ?" he asked, not knowing what else to say, to begin with.
The woman lifted her hand to her lips--touched them--and shook her head.
"Dumb ?" The woman bowed her head.
"Who are you ?" The woman wrote on her slate, and handed it to him over the pear-trees.
He read:--"I am the cook." "Well, cook, were you born dumb ?" The woman shook her head.
"What struck you dumb ?" The woman wrote on her slate:--"A blow." "Who gave you the blow ?" She shook her head.
"Won't you tell me ?" She shook her head again.
Her eyes had rested on his face while he was questioning her; staring at him, cold, dull, and changeless as the eyes of a corpse.

Firm as his nerves were--dense as he was, on all ordinary occasions, to any thing in the shape of an imaginative impression--the eyes of the dumb cook slowly penetrated him with a stealthy inner chill.