But Mr.Goren did not stop here.
Behind these external characteristics he nursed a passion.

Evan was astonished and pleased to find in him an enthusiastic fern-collector.
Not that Mr.Harrington shared the passion, but the sight of these brown roots spread out, ticketed, on the stained paper, after supper, when the shutters were up and the house defended from the hostile outer world; the old man poring over them, and naming this and that spot where, during his solitary Saturday afternoon and Sunday excursions, he had lighted on the rare samples exhibited this contrast of the quiet evening with the sordid day humanized Mr.Goren to him.

He began to see a spirit in the rigid tradesman not so utterly dissimilar to his own, and he fancied that he, too, had a taste for ferns.

Round Beckley how they abounded! He told Mr.Goren so, and Mr.Goren said: 'Some day we'll jog down there together, as the saying goes.' Mr.Goren spoke of it as an ordinary event, likely to happen in the days to come: not as an incident the mere mention of which, as being probable, stopped the breath and made the pulses leap.
For now Evan's education taught him to feel that he was at his lowest degree.

Never now could Rose stoop to him.