"We must get that packing-case opened after dinner.

I'm anxious to see the pictures." Mr.Bell put the finishing touches to his little finger-nail and briskly pocketed his penknife.
"Shall we go downstairs now ?" he suggested.

"Fix your brooch, mother; it's just on the drop." Elfrida Bell had been a long year away--a year that seemed longer to her than it possibly could to anybody in Sparta, as she privately reflected when her father made this observation for the second and the third time.

Sparta accounted for its days chiefly in ledgers, the girl thought; there was a rising and a going down of the sun, a little eating and drinking and speedy sleeping, a little discussion of the newspapers.

Sparta got over its days by strides and stretches, and the strides and stretches seemed afterward to have been made over gaps and gulfs full of emptiness.