people who are old or not perfectly happy.

"You're not Irish, are you?" she enquired seriously; and immediately he
knew that her husband had been Irish, and that she held a naïve and
touching belief that no one but a man of his race would have behaved as
he had done, that all other men would have been kind. Particularly now
that Ellen was growing such a big girl she didn't want any Irish coming
into this little home, where at least there was peace and quiet.

"No," he said reassuringly, "I'm not Irish. My people have been in Essex
for hundreds of years. I'm afraid," he added, for so evident was it that
most of her fellow-creatures had dealt cheatingly with her that decent
people felt a special obligation to treat her honestly, "my grandmother
was an O'Connor, but she was half French. Lord, what's that?"

It seemed as if a heavy sea was breaking on the back of the house as on
a sea-wall. The gasolier trembled, the floor throbbed, the little goblin
dwelling pulsated as if it were alarmed. Only the continued calm of Mrs.
Melville at her knitting and the coarse threads of music running through
the sound persuaded him that this riot was the result of some genial
human activity.

"Oh, I suppose you notice it, being a stranger," said Mrs. Melville. "We
hardly hear it now. You see, they've turned the Wesleyan Hall that backs
on to the Square into a dancing-hall, and this is the grand noise they
make with their feet. It's not a nice place. 'Gentlemen a shilling,
ladies invited,' it says outside. Still, we don't complain, for the
noise is nothing noticeable and it reduces the rent."

This was a masterpiece of circumstance. By nothing more than a thin wall