The girl was very dear to me, and it was a trial.
Thus a division grew up amongst us.

It was in the bright frosty days before Christmas, when the fields and dales were wrapped in snow, when the logs burned merrily, and the crickets sang, when fairyland was painted on every window-pane, when our superintendence at the Hall was over, when all things there had been placed in readiness, even to the lighting of the fires in the bed-chambers.

We had left Mrs.Beatty in possession of her domain, and in daily expectation of an announcement of the intended arrival of her master and mistress.

Things were in this way when one day a carriage dashed up to our farmhouse door, and out stepped Grace Tyrrell and her brother Frederick.
Jane shrank into a corner when I asked her to accompany me down-stairs, murmuring something I would not hear about my "fine friends." But Mopsie smoothed her curly locks, put on her best apron, and slipped her hand in mine as I went down to the parlour.
Grace was impatiently tripping about the room, making faces at the bare walls and laughing at the old-fashioned furniture.

She was clothed in velvet and fur with feathers nodding from her hat.