Women cannot sit together for long without talking; men can enjoy each other's companionship for hours with scarcely the interchange of an idea.
Meanwhile, I watched the squirrels up in the beech-trees and the dancing of the green leaves against the sky; and thought dreamily of home, of my father, of the far past, and the possible future.

I asked myself how, when my term of study came to an end, I should ever again endure the old home-life at Saxonholme?
How settle down for life as my father's partner, conforming myself to his prejudices, obeying all the demands of his imperious temper, and accepting for evermore the monotonous routine of a provincial practice! It was an intolerable prospect, but no less inevitable than intolerable.

Pondering thus, I sighed heavily, and the sigh roused Dalrymple's attention.
"Why, Damon," said he, turning over on his elbow, and pushing up his hat to the level of his eyes, "what's the matter with you ?" "Oh, nothing--at least, nothing new." "Well, new or old, what is it?
A man must be either in debt, or in love, when he sighs in that way.

You look as melancholy as Werter redivivus!" "I--I ought not to be melancholy, I suppose; for I was thinking of home." Dalrymple's face and voice softened immediately.
"Poor boy!" he said, throwing away the end of his cigar, "yours is not a bright home, I fear.

You told me, I think, that you had lost your mother ?" "From infancy." "And you have no sisters ?" "None.