The War wakened him up, and he was in the thick of it both in the East and in France, but never in the limelight, you understand, just doggedly doing his best in the background.

If he would marry a sensible wife with some ambition, but he's about as much sentiment in him as Jock.

It would take an earthquake to shake him into matrimony." "Perhaps," said Pamela, "he is like your friend Mirren--'bye caring.'" "Nonsense," said Mrs.Hope briskly.

"He's 'bye' the fervent stage, if he ever was a prisoner in that cage of rushes, which I doubt, but there are long years before him, I hope, and if there isn't a fire of affection on the hearth, and someone always about to listen and understand, it's a dowie business when the days draw in and the nights get longer and colder, and the light departs." "But if it's dreary for a man," said Pamela, "what of us?
What of the 'left ladies,' as I heard a child describe spinsters ?" Mrs.Hope's blue eyes, callously calm, surveyed the three spinsters before her.
"You will get no pity from me," she said.

"It's practically always the woman's own fault if she remains unmarried.