The master was doubly embarrassed.

In the first place, there was an enforced contrast with poor Mliss in all this praise of Clytie.

Secondly, there was something unpleasantly confidential in his tone of speaking of Mrs.
Morpher's earliest born.

So that the master, after a few futile efforts to say something natural, found it convenient to recall another engagement, and left without asking the information required, but in his after reflections somewhat unjustly giving the Rev.Mr.McSnagley the full benefit of having refused it.
Perhaps this rebuff placed the master and pupil once more in the close communion of old.

The child seemed to notice the change in the master's manner, which had of late been constrained, and in one of their long postprandial walks she stopped suddenly, and mounting a stump, looked full in his face with big, searching eyes.