Happening to be a specialist on the subject and an enthusiastic farmer from his earliest days, he took the rebuke with proper meekness.

The spectacled people were talking earnestly with his wife.

Arthur was absorbed in his dinner and furtive glances at his left-hand neighbour.

There remained Bertha Afflint, whom he had hitherto admired with fear.

To talk with her was exhausting to frail mortality, and he had avoided the pleasure except in moments of boisterous bodily and mental health.