Men always laugh at strong-minded women; but I'm sure I don't know why.

I can't think how any human being with duties and responsibilities can be either more useful or more agreeable for being weak-minded." And this was all that Polly contributed to our nonsensical conversation about the heiresses.
After she came I forsook the society of Maria.

I knew now that she only wanted to talk to me about the Rector and the parish.

Besides, though Maria was strongly interested in Dacrefield for Clerke's sake, she knew much less of it than Polly, with whom I revisited numberless haunts of our childhood, the barns and stables, the fernery, the "Pulpit" and the "Pew." I did not tell her of my romance with Maria.

I was not proud of it.
But as we sat together in the old apple-room above the stables, I confided to her my "unfortunate attachment," which I had now sufficiently recovered from not to be offended by her opinion, that it was all for the best that it had ended as it had.
I do not remember exactly how it was that I came to know that Polly--even Polly--had her own private heart-ache.