The Ear-Trumpet
They were talking of people I did not know. ‘How do they spend their time there?’ some one asked.
Then I, who had been sitting too long silent, raised my voice. ‘Ah, that’s a mysterious question, when you think of it, how people spend their time. We only see them after all in glimpses; but what, I often wonder, do they do in their hushed and shrouded hours—in all the interstices of their lives?’
‘In the what?’
‘In the times, I mean, when no one sees them. In the intervals.’
‘But that isn’t the word you used?’
‘It’s the same thing—the interstices—’
Of course there was a deaf lady present. ‘What did you say?’ she inquired, holding out her ear-trumpet for my answer.