As the appointments to Annapolis had to be won in competitive examinations she soon persuaded him that the quicker he buckled down to hard study the sooner he would attain the goal.

This matter arranged, Mrs.Bassett went back to bed, where she received Sylvia occasionally and expressed her sorrow that Mrs.Owen, at her time of life, should be running a boarding-house for a lot of girls who were better off at work.

Her aunt was merely making them dissatisfied with their lot.

She did not guess the import of the industries in Mrs.Owen's kitchen, as reported through various agencies; they were merely a new idiosyncracy of her aunt's old age, a deplorable manifestation of senility.
Sylvia was a comfortable confessor; Mrs.Bassett said many things to her that she would have liked to say to Mrs.Owen, with an obscure hope that they might in due course be communicated to that inexplicable old woman.
And Sylvia certainly was past; mistress of the difficult art of brushing hair without tangling and pulling it, thereby tearing one's nerves to shreds--as the nurse did.

Mrs.Owen's visits were only occasional, but they usually proved disturbing.