Boulou, like Hester, had no happy medium in his character.

He was what Mrs.Gresley called "very Frenchy," and he now showed his Frenchyness by a foolish exhibition of himself in coursing round and round the room with his silly foreign tail crooked the wrong way.
"Mother got out at Mrs.Brown's," shrieked Regie, in his highest voice, "and I drove up." "Oh, Regie!" expostulated Mary the virtuous, the invariable corrector of the statements of others.

"You held the reins, but William walked beside." Hester made the children shake hands with her guests, and then they clustered round her to show what they had bought.
Though the Bishop was fond of children, he became suddenly restive.

He took out his watch, and was nervously surprised at the lapse of time.
The carriage was sent for, and in a few minutes that dignified vehicle was bowling back to Southminster.
"I am not satisfied about Hester," said the Bishop.

"She looks ill and irritable, and she has the tense expression of a person who is making a colossal effort to be patient, and whose patience, after successfully meeting twenty calls upon it in the course of the day, collapses entirely at the twenty-first.