I promised father to be kind to her, though he could never have guessed how she would need it.

He meant that I would only put up, without losing my temper, with her way of always pretending to be ill, and never doing anything but lie on the sofa and read poetry.

Still, of course, it meant I was to be kind anyhow, whatever happened, and I will try to be so, though it is hard when she has brought such trouble upon us all.
"As for Mulready I should like to burn his mill down, or to break his neck.

I hate him: it's bad enough to be a tyrant; but to be a tyrant and a hypocrite, too, is horrible.

Well, at any rate he shan't lord it over me;" and so at last Ned dropped off to sleep.
He was still soundly asleep when Bill Swinton came in to wake him.