"Conceive the four of us gathered round the kitchen fire--three men and a maid; the three men yearning to know what is in the maid's mind, and each concealing his anxiety from the others.
Elspeth gives the doctor a look which may mean much or nothing, and he glares at me as if I were in the way, and I glance at Aaron, and he is on tenterhooks lest I have noticed anything.

Next minute, perhaps, David gives utterance to a plaintive sigh, and Aaron and I pounce upon Elspeth (with our eyes) to observe its effect on her, and Elspeth wonders why Aaron is staring, and he looks apprehensively at me, and I am gazing absent-mindedly at the fender.
"You may smile, Grizel," Tommy would say, "and now that I think of it, I can smile myself, but we are an eerie quartet at the time.

When the strain becomes unendurable, one of us rises and mends the fire with his foot, and then I think the rest of us could say 'Thank you.' We talk desperately for a little after that, but soon again the awful pall creeps down." "If I were there," cried Grizel, "I would not have the parlour standing empty all this time." "We are coming to the parlour," Tommy replies impressively.

"The parlour, Grizel, now begins to stir.

Elspeth has disappeared from the kitchen, we three men know not whither.