Many a matter, over which grown people look important, long-faced, and consequential, is folly, compared with the merest child's frolic, in relation to the true affairs of existence.
All the time, Letty had not in the least neglected her houseduties; and, again, her readings with her cousin Godfrey, since Tom's apparent recession, had begun to revive in interest.

He grew kinder and kinder to her, more and more fatherly.
But the mother, once disquieted, had lost no time in taking measures.
In every direction, secretly, through friends, she was inquiring after some situation suitable for Letty: she owed it to herself, she said, to find for the girl the right thing, before sending her from the house.
In the true spirit of benevolent tyranny, she said not a word to Letty of her design.

She had the chronic distemper of concealment, where Letty had but a feverish attack.

Much false surmise might have been corrected, and much evil avoided, had she put it in Letty's power to show how gladly she would leave Thornwick.

In the mean time the old lady kept her lynx-eye upon the young people.
But Godfrey, having caught a certain expression in the said eye, came to the resolution that thenceforth their schoolroom should be the common sitting-room.