My dear,' turning to me, when Tracy had left the room, 'I am almost ashamed to look you in the face when I remember how long you have been in Heathfield and that I have never called on you; but Etta told me that you did not care to have visitors.' 'Yes, I know, Mrs.Maberley; but that is quite a mistake,' I returned, somewhat eagerly, for I had fallen in love with the pretty old lady, and her tall, aristocratic colonel with his white moustache and grand military carriage, and had watched them with much interest from my place in church.

She was such a dainty old lady, like a piece of Dresden china, with her pink cheeks and white curls and old-fashioned shoe-buckles; and she had such beautiful little hands, plump and soft as a baby's, which she seemed to regard with innocent pride, for she was always settling the lace ruffles round her wrists and pinching them up with careful fingers.
'Dear, dear! I thought Etta told me,' she began rather nervously.
'Miss Darrell makes mistakes, like other people,' I answered, smiling.
'I shall be very pleased to know my neighbours; it is quite true that I am not often at home, and just now I am very busy, but all the same I do not mean to shut myself out from society.

One owes a duty to one's neighbours.' 'My dear Miss Garston, I am quite pleased to hear you talk so sensibly.
I was afraid from what Etta said that you were a little eccentric and strong-minded, and I have such a dislike to that in young people; young ladies are so terribly independent at the present day, in my opinion, and I know the colonel thinks the same.

They are sadly deficient in good manners and reverence.

That is why I am so fond of the Hamilton girls: they are perfect young gentlewomen; they never talk slang or slip-shod English, and they know how to respect gray hairs.