"The neighbourhood has not been kind to Mrs.Ballantyne.She has been made to suffer.

The Vicar's wife, for instance--a most uncharitable person.

And my sister, your Aunt Margaret, too, in Great Beeding--she is what you would call--" "Hot stuff," murmured Dick.
"Quite so," replied Mr.Hazlewood, and he turned to his son with a look of keen interest upon his face.

"I am not familiar with the phrase, Richard, but not for the first time I notice that the crude and inelegant vulgarisms in which you abound and which you no doubt pick up in the barrack squares compress a great deal of forcible meaning into very few words." "That is indeed true, sir," replied Dick with an admirable gravity, "and if I might be allowed to suggest it, a pamphlet upon that interesting subject would be less dangerous work than coquetting with the latest edition of the Marquise de Brinvilliers." The word pamphlet was a bugle-call to Mr.Hazlewood.
"Ah! Speaking of pamphlets, my boy," he began, and walked over to a desk which was littered with papers.
"We have not the time, sir," Dick interrupted from the bay of the window.
A woman had come out from the cottage.

She unlatched a little gate in her garden which opened on to the meadow.