Sally Owen had an active curiosity, but it was of the healthy sort that wastes no time on trifling matters.

She was curious about Sylvia, for Sylvia was a little different from the young girls she knew.

Quite naturally she was comparing the slim, dark-eyed girl at her side with Marian Bassett.
Marian was altogether obvious; whereas Mrs.Owen felt the barriers of reserve in Sylvia.

Sylvia embodied questions in the Kelton family history that she could not answer, though she had known Andrew Kelton all his life, and remembered dimly his only daughter, who had unaccountably vanished.
"Where do you go to school, Sylvia ?" she asked.
"I don't go to school,--not to a real school,--but grandfather teaches me; he has always taught me." "And you are now about--how old ?" "Sixteen in October.

I've been talking to grandfather about going to college." "They do send girls to college nowadays, don't they! We're beginning to have some of these college women in our town here.