"Your Aunt Angela has a headache, so she couldn't stand the noise.

I went out to get her some flowers and offered to sit with her, but this is one of her bad days, poor girl." He fell silent for a minute and then added, wistfully, "I'm wondering if you would like to hear 'Ye Banks and Braes o' Bonnie Doon'?
It used to be your mother's favourite air." Though he was an inoffensively amiable and eagerly obliging old man, by some ironic contradiction of his intentions his life had become a series of blunders through which he endeavoured to add his share to the general happiness.

His soul was overflowing with humanity, and he spent sleepless nights evolving innocent pleasures for those about him, but his excess of goodness invariably resulted in producing petty annoyances if not serious inconveniences.

So his virtues had come to be regarded with timidity, and there was an ever present anxiety in the air as to what Uncle Percival was "doing" in his mind.

The fear of inopportune benefits was in its way as oppressive as the dread of unmerited misfortune.
Laura shook her head impatiently as she threw herself into a chair on the other side of the tall bronze lamp upon the writing table.