He rose promptly and greeted her, and pushed forward the leather easy-chair with his old courtly flourish.
"I suppose that old stick of a woman will be in pretty soon," he had remarked to his sister at breakfast-time.
"Well, you'll keep on the right side of her, if you know which side your bread is buttered," she retorted.

"You don't want her goin' to Sam Totten's." Totten was the other lawyer of Elliot.
"I think I am quite aware of all the exigencies of the case," Daniel Tuxbury had replied, lapsing into stateliness, as he always did when his sister waxed too forcible in her advice.
But when Mrs.Field entered his office, every trace of his last night's impatience had vanished.

He inquired genially if she had passed a comfortable night, and on being assured that she had, pressed her to drink a cup of coffee which he had requested his sister to keep warm.

This declined, with her countrified courtesy, so shy that it seemed grim, he proceeded, with no chill upon his graciousness, to business.
Through the next two hours Mrs.Field sat at the lawyer's desk, and listened to a minute and wearisome description of her new possessions.

She listened with very little understanding.