It ain't like you to sit in judgment." "I am not sitting in judgment, but I don't see why I'm obliged to be friendly with a strange man who says 'idee.' It would be bad for the children." "Mrs.Squires has known him for thirty years--he's forty-five now--and she says it's a miracle the way he's come up.

He was born in a cellar." "I dare say he has a great deal of force, but you must admit that blood tells, Miss Polly." "I never said it didn't, Gabriella--only that there's much more credit to a man that comes up without it." "Oh, I'll admire him all you please," retorted Gabriella, "if you'll promise to keep him away from the children." Though she spoke sharply, the sharpness was directed not to Miss Polly, but to herself--to her own incomprehensible childishness.

The man interested her; already she had thought of him daily since she first came to the house; already she had begun to wonder about him, and she realized that she should wonder still more because of what Miss Polly had told her.

When he had approached her in the yard, she had been vaguely disturbed, vaguely thrilled by the strangeness and the mystery surrounding him; she had been subtly aware of his nearness before she heard his step, and turning, found his eyes fixed upon her.

Her own weakness in not controlling her curiosity, in recurring, in spite of her determined resolve to that first meeting, in allowing a coarse, rough stranger--yes, a coarse, rough, uneducated stranger, she insisted desperately--to hold her attention for a minute--the incredible weakness of these things goaded her into a feeling of positive anger.