"What is there monstrous," she asked, "in your being so good to Elspeth?
It is very kind of you to give her all these things." "Especially when by rights they are yours, Grizel!" "No, not when you did not want to give them to me." He dared say nothing to that; there were some matters on which he must not contradict Grizel now.
"It is nice of you," she said, "not to complain, though Elspeth is deserting you.

It must have been a blow." "You and I only know why," he answered.

"But for her, Grizel, I might be whining sentiment to you at this moment." "That," she said, "would be the monstrous thing." "And it is not monstrous, I suppose, that I should let Gemmell press my hand under the conviction that, after all, I am a trump." "You don't pose as one." "That makes them think the more highly of me! Nothing monstrous, Grizel, in my standing quietly by while you are showing Elspeth how to furnish her house--I, who know why you have the subject at your finger-tips!" For Grizel had given all her sweet ideas to Elspeth.

Heigh-ho! how she had guarded them once, confiding them half reluctantly even to Tommy; half reluctantly, that is, at the start, because they were her very own, but once she was embarked on the subject talking with such rapture that every minute or two he had to beg her to be calm.

She was the first person in that part of the world to think that old furniture need not be kept in the dark corners, and she knew where there was an oak bedstead that was looked upon as a disgrace, and where to obtain the dearest cupboards, one of them in use as the retiring-chamber of a rabbit-hutch, and stately clocks made in the town a hundred years ago, and quaint old-farrant lamps and cogeys and sand-glasses that apologized if you looked at them, and yet were as willing to be loved again as any old lady in a mutch.