So far as external preparations were concerned, there seemed, indeed, but little to improve; but apart from these, what had we to offer, in ourselves and our society, to attract her?
There lay the knotty point of the question, and there the grand difficulty of finding an answer.
I fall into serious reflection while I am dressing on the pursuits and occupations with which we three brothers have been accustomed, for years past, to beguile the time.

Are they at all likely, in the case of any one of us, to interest or amuse her?
My chief occupation, to begin with the youngest, consists, in acting as steward on Owen's property.

The routine of my duties has never lost its sober attraction to my tastes, for it has always employed me in watching the best interests of my brother, and of my son also, who is one day to be his heir.

But can I expect our fair guest to sympathize with such family concerns as these?
Clearly not.
Morgan's pursuit comes next in order of review--a pursuit of a far more ambitious nature than mine.

It was always part of my second brother's whimsical, self-contradictory character to view with the profoundest contempt the learned profession by which he gained his livelihood, and he is now occupying the long leisure hours of his old age in composing a voluminous treatise, intended, one of these days, to eject the whole body corporate of doctors from the position which they have usurped in the estimation of their fellow-creatures.