On the whole the ladies from Bross profited rather than lost by the new frame they stepped into in the house of Dr Drummond, of Elgin, Ontario.
Their special virtues, of dignity and solidity and frugality, stood out saliently against the ease and unconstraint about them; in the profusion of the table it was little less than edifying to hear Mrs Kilbannon, invited to preserves, say, "Thank you, I have butter." It was the pleasantest spectacle, happily common enough, of the world's greatest inheritance.

We see it in immigrants of all degrees, and we may perceive it in Miss Cameron and Mrs Kilbannon.

They come in couples and in companies from those little imperial islands, bringing the crusted qualities of the old blood bottled there so long, and sink with grateful absorption into the wide bountiful stretches of the further countries.
They have much to take, but they give themselves; and so it comes about that the Empire is summed up in the race, and the flag flies for its ideals.
Mrs Forsyth had been told of the approaching event; but neither Dr Drummond, who was not fond of making communications he did not approve of, nor the Murchisons, who were shy of the matter as a queer business which Advena seemed too much mixed up with, had mentioned it to anyone else.

Finlay himself had no intimates, and moved into his new house in River Street under little comment.

His doings excited small surprise, because the town knew too little about him to expect him to do one thing more than another.