Try to imagine the intellectual opposite of such a young man, and you--That will be far more like Mr.Athel.' 'He isn't conceited?
My want of experience has an unfortunate tendency to make me think of young fellows in his position as unbearably vain.

It must be so hard to avoid it.' 'Perhaps it is, if they have the common misfortune to be born without brains.' Other subjects engaged their attention.
'When do you take your holiday, father ?' Emily asked.
'I think about the middle of this month.

It won't be more than a week or ten days.' 'Don't you think you ought to go to Cleethorpes, if only for a day or two ?' To suggest any other place of summer retreat would have been too alarming.

Mr.Hood's defect of imagination was illustrated in this matter; he had been somehow led, years ago, to pay a visit to Cleethorpes, and since then that one place represented for him the seaside.

Others might be just as accessible and considerably more delightful, but it did not even occur to him to vary.