Did Willoughby say three weeks, or did he say four?
She tried to remember.
At this point, however, the door opened and a tall burly man entered the room, came forward and shook Helen's hand with an emotional kind of heartiness, Willoughby himself, Rachel's father, Helen's brother-in-law.
As a great deal of flesh would have been needed to make a fat man of him, his frame being so large, he was not fat; his face was a large framework too, looking, by the smallness of the features and the glow in the hollow of the cheek, more fitted to withstand assaults of the weather than to express sentiments and emotions, or to respond to them in others.
"It is a great pleasure that you have come," he said, "for both of us." Rachel murmured in obedience to her father's glance.
"We'll do our best to make you comfortable.

And Ridley.

We think it an honour to have charge of him.

Pepper'll have some one to contradict him--which I daren't do.

You find this child grown, don't you?
A young woman, eh ?" Still holding Helen's hand he drew his arm round Rachel's shoulder, thus making them come uncomfortably close, but Helen forbore to look.
"You think she does us credit ?" he asked.
"Oh yes," said Helen.
"Because we expect great things of her," he continued, squeezing his daughter's arm and releasing her.