Neither do I blame them much; for the wisest thing is to laugh at people when we cannot understand them.

I, for my part, took no notice; but in my heart despised them as beings of a lesser nature, who never had seen Lorna.

Yet I was vexed, and rubbed myself, when John Fry spread all over the farm, and even at the shoeing forge, that a mad dog had come and bitten me, from the other side of Mallond.
This seems little to me now; and so it might to any one; but, at the time, it worked me up to a fever of indignity.

To make a mad dog of Lorna, to compare all my imaginings (which were strange, I do assure you--the faculty not being apt to work), to count the raising of my soul no more than hydrophobia! All this acted on me so, that I gave John Fry the soundest threshing that ever a sheaf of good corn deserved, or a bundle of tares was blessed with.

Afterwards he went home, too tired to tell his wife the meaning of it; but it proved of service to both of them, and an example for their children.
Now the climate of this country is--so far as I can make of it--to throw no man into extremes; and if he throw himself so far, to pluck him back by change of weather and the need of looking after things.