This she had told them often.

How different was such a woman from Phoebe or Molly Tooney! How happy would she be if there had been such a one in her mother's family, and were she with her now! "But I have only Ralph," thought Miriam; "no one else in the world." Ralph was good,--no human being could be better; but he was only one person, and knew nothing of many things she wanted to know, and could not help her in many ways in which she needed to be helped.
With a feeling that from certain points of view she was rather solitary and somewhat forsaken, she went to look for her brother.

It would be better to talk to what she had than to think about what she had not.
As she walked toward the barn and pasture fields, Ralph came up from the cornfield by the woods on the other side of the house.

As he went in he met Mrs.Drane and La Fleur, who had just come downstairs.

Cicely had already retired to her work.