It was a bare, stony place; shrubs that had been planted had not grown.

In the corner where they untie it, except little by little, in a lifetime, or in generations of lives! Alec Trenholme, confronted almost for the first time with the thought that it is not easy to find the ideal modern life, even when one is anxious to conform to it, began tugging at all the strands of difficulty at once, not seeing them very clearly, but still with no notion but that if he set his strength to it, he could unravel them all in the half-hour's walk that lay between him and the college.
He had not got from under the arching elms at the thin end of the village when two young ladies in an open phaeton bowed to him.

He was not absent; his mind worked wholesomely at the same instant with his senses.

He saw and knew that these were the Miss Browns, to whom Robert had introduced him at the end of the Sunday evening service.

He thought them very pretty; he had seen then that they were very gentle and respectful to Robert; he saw now from the smile that accompanied the bow, that he was a person they delighted to honour.