'She has a romantic look,' was the General's comment; and that her husband had been an insatiable traveller before he became an invalid, and had never cared for Art.

'Quite an extraordinary circumstance, with such a wife!' the General said.
He fell upon the wych-elm with his own hands, under cover of the leafage, and the next day he paid his respects to Lady Camper, to inquire if her ladyship saw any further obstruction to the view.
'None,' she replied.

'And now we shall see what the two birds will do.' Apparently, then, she entertained an animosity to a pair of birds in the tree.
'Yes, yes; I say they chirp early in the morning,' said General Ople.
'At all hours.' 'The song of birds... ?' he pleaded softly for nature.
'If the nest is provided for them; but I don't like vagabond chirping.' The General perfectly acquiesced.

This, in an engagement with a clever woman, is what you should do, or else you are likely to find yourself planted unawares in a high wind, your hat blown off, and your coat-tails anywhere; in other words, you will stand ridiculous in your bewilderment; and General Ople ever footed with the utmost caution to avoid that quagmire of the ridiculous.

The extremer quags he had hitherto escaped; the smaller, into which he fell in his agile evasions of the big, he had hitherto been blest in finding none to notice.
He requested her ladyship's permission to present his daughter.