Where he wished to learn he was the aptest pupil, and from the days of the tobacco-field he had longed for this smooth lustre.

Not Gideon, but the mother, spoke in the appreciation and the facility.

Manner counted for much in Lewis Rand's day; the critical point was not what you did, but the way you did it.
Rand set himself to learn from his wife all the passwords of the region native to her, but into which he had broken.

She taught him that code with a courtesy and simplicity exquisitely high-minded and sweet, and he learned with quickness, gratitude, and lack of any false shame.

What else he might have learned of her he dimly felt, but he had not covenanted with existence for qualities that would war with a hundred purposes of his brain and will.