While he missed their visitor in many other ways, he alluded to her premature departure only in connection with their domestic affairs.
But so far as Miriam was concerned, he could have done nothing worse than this.

To have heard her brother say that Dora Bannister was the most lovely girl he had ever seen, and that he was filled with grief at losing the delights of her society, might have been disagreeable to her, or it might not.

But to have him even in the lightest way intimate that her housekeeping was preferable to that of his own sister nettled her self-esteem.
"I will show him," she said, "that he is mistaken." In the pleasant coolness of the great barn, Ralph stretched himself on a pile of new-made hay to think.

He was a farmer, and he intended to try to be a good farmer, and he knew that good farmers, during working hours, do not lie down on piles of hay to think.

But notwithstanding that, in this hay-scented solitude, looking out of the great door upon the quiet landscape with the white clouds floating over it, he thought of Dora.