They were all a background, simply a background that blew backwards and forwards like tapestry according to one's need of them.

His torture of Miss Jones had been founded on no sort of realisation of her as a human being; she had been a silly old woman, of course, but just as the battered weather-beaten Aunt Sally in the garden was a silly old woman.
Her crying horrified, terrified, and disgusted him.

It was all so dreary, the horrible weather outside, the beginning of a cold in his head, the schoolroom fire almost out, everyone's bad temper, including his own, and this sudden horrible jumping-to-life of a grown-up human being.

She, meanwhile, was too deeply involved now in the waters of her affliction to care very deeply who saw her or what anyone said to her.
She did feel dimly that she ought not to be crying in front of a small boy of eight years old, and that it would be better to hide herself in her bedroom, but she did not mind--she COULD not mind--her neuralgia was too bad.
"It's the neuralgia in my head," she said in a muffled confused voice.
That he could understand.

He also had pains in his head.