She could feel his anxious friendliness.

"What a dear he is to me," she thought.
As time went on this companionship grew so natural to them both that more than once Ethel felt in herself a content which made her a little uneasy.

As in his blunt kindly way Joe drew closer to her now, she had an awkward consciousness of being in her sister's place.

No, not that exactly.

Still, she did not care to think of it.