I think you can trust me, whatever dodge the old malady is working on her.' And later in speaking of Lydia's sister he affirms: 'Your sister Marietta is not a very happy woman.

She has too many of your father's brains for the life she's been shunted into.

She might be damming up a big river with a finely constructed concrete dam, and what she is giving all her strength to is trying to hold back a muddy little trickle with her bare hands.

The achievement of her life is to give on a two-thousand-a-year income the appearance of having five thousand like your father.

She does it; she's a remarkably forceful woman, but it frets her.