There were no ornaments except some fine old brass: solid chairs and a low, wide-seated sofa, and books everywhere.
"The shape of the room is delightfully unusual.

It is long and rather low-ceilinged, and one end comes almost to a point like the bow of a ship.

There is a window with a window-seat in the bow, and as the house stands high on a slope and faces west, you look straight across the river to the hills, and almost have the feeling that you are sailing into the sunset.
"In this room a girl sat, darning stockings and crying quietly to herself--crying because her brother David had gone to Oxford the day before, and she was afraid he would find it hard work to live on his scholarship with the small help she could give him, afraid that he might find himself shabby and feel it bitter, afraid that he might not come back to her the kind, clear-eyed boy he had gone away.
"She told me all about it as simply as a child.

Didn't seem to find it in the least odd to confide in a stranger, didn't seem at all impressed by the sudden appearance of my fashionably dressed self! "People, I am often told, find themselves rather in awe of me.

I know that they would rather have me for a friend than an enemy.