He desired, he said, to have the pleasure of introducing him to her.
"He is very true and simple-heaped," said the elder brother; "and from the photograph you have seen, you will know he is a sturdy lad." He spoke with a certain air of depression, which Sophia judged to relate to wild oats she supposed this Alec to be sowing.

"He was always his dear father's favourite boy," added Trenholme, with a quite involuntary sigh.
"A Benjamin!" cried Mrs.Rexford, but, with that quickness of mind natural to her, she did not pause an instant over the thought.
"Well, really, Principal Trenholme, it'll be a comfort to you to have him under your own eye.

I often say to my husband that that must be our comfort now--that the children are all under our eye; and, indeed, with but one sitting-room furnished, and so little outing except in our own fields, it couldn't well be otherwise.

It's an advantage in a way." "A doubtful advantage in some ways," said Sophia; but the little children were now heard crying, so she ran from the room.
"Ah, Principal Trenholme," cried the little step-mother, shaking her head (she was sewing most vigorously the while), "if my children will but profit by _her_ example! But, indeed, I reproach myself that she is here at all, although she came against my desire.

Sophia is not involved in our--I might say poverty, Principal Trenholme." (It was the first-time the word had crossed her lips, although she always conversed freely to him.) "When I see the farm producing so little in comparison, I may say, in confidence, _poverty_; but Sophia has sufficient income of her own." "I did not know that," said Trenholme, sincerely.