Kind-hearted things they are, both of them.' Gilbert assented silently.

His mother seldom elicited a word from him on the subject of the sisters.
On the following afternoon, Gilbert and Egremont met at the appointed place just as three was striking.

Already night had begun to close in, a sad wind moaned about the streets, and the cold grey of the sky was patched about with dim shifting black clouds.

Egremont was full of cheeriness as he shook hands.
'What a wonderful people we are,' he exclaimed, 'to have developed even so much civilisation in a climate such as this!' The school building which they were about to inspect stood at the junction of two streets, which consisted chiefly of dwellings.

In the nature of things it was ugly.