She laid on hot colors thickly, and Elsmere at once assumed extravagance.
'A saint, a beauty, and a wit all to yourselves in these wilds!' he said laughing.

'What luck! But what on earth brought them here--a widow and three daughters--from the south?
It was an odd settlement surely, though you have one of the loveliest valleys and the purest airs in England.' 'Oh, as to lovely valleys,' said Mrs.Thornburgh, sighing, 'I think it very dull; I always have.

When one has to depend for everything on a carrier that gets drunk, too! Why you know they belong here.

They're real Westmoreland people.' 'What does that mean exactly ?' 'Oh, their grandfather was a farmer, just like one of the common farmers about.

Only his land was his own and theirs isn't.' 'He was one of the last of the statesmen,' interposed Mr.
Thornburgh--who, having rescued his sermon from Jane's tender mercies, and put out his modest claret and sherry for the evening, had strolled out again and found himself impelled as usual to put some precision into his wife's statements--'one of the small freeholders who have almost disappeared here as elsewhere.