It had grown to be a loving habit with her, and she had a way of answering absently.
"Yes, dear, I'm quite sure of it," which always satisfied him that he had her attention.

But now, she sat looking out the window and thinking, a perplexed expression on her face.

It had not altogether been her desire that the coming child should be a boy, although not one word had she breathed of this to Dean Peabody.

Their lives had run in tranquil grooves.
Everything about their daily routine was as St.Paul suggested, "Decently and in order." The determination to take one of the Greenacre brood had been a sudden one.

The Dean had been reading somebody's theory about the obligations of age to youth.
"Daphne, my dear," he had remarked one evening, as the two sat quietly in the old library, "we have been leading very narrow, selfish lives, and we will suffer for it as we grow older.