They had open minds, most of them, and when a cloud appeared it was seldom more than a prejudice.

It was only his impression, and perhaps it would not stand cynical inquiry; but he had a grateful conviction that the English Press occupied in the main a lofty and impartial ground of opinion, from which it desired only a view of the facts in their true proportion.

On his return he confided it to Horace Williams, who scoffed and ran the national politics of the Express in the local interests of Fox County as hard as ever; but it had fallen in with Lorne's beautiful beliefs about England, and he clung to it for years.
The Williamses had come over the second evening following Lorne's arrival, after tea.

Rawlins had gone to the station, just to see that the Express would make no mistake in announcing that Mr L.Murchison had "Returned to the Paternal Roof," and the Express had announced it, with due congratulation.

Family feeling demanded that for the first twenty-four hours he should be left to his immediate circle, but people had been dropping in all the next day at the office, and now came the Williamses "trapesing," as Mrs Murchison said, across the grass, though she was too content to make it more than a private grievance, to where they all sat on the verandah.
"What I don't understand," Horace Williams said to Mr Murchison, "was why you didn't give him a blow on the whistle.