What then was the difference! It could hardly have anything to do with a certain young person half his own age, with whom the tutor had not had two hours' continuous conversation in his life, and of whose behaviour generally he did not at all know whether he approved or not.
"Ridiculous!" said Mr Armstrong to himself with a smile, as he strolled up the carriage drive.
At that moment the distant hall-door opened, and a light figure stepped out for a moment on to the door-step to pat the great mastiff that lay sleeping on the mat.

The apparition, the caress, and the vanishing occupied scarcely half a minute, and when it was past Mr Armstrong was only ten paces nearer the house than he had been when it appeared.
But, somehow, in those few seconds the amused smile on his lips faded away, and the eye-glass dropped somewhat limply from his eye, as he repeated to himself more emphatically than before-- "Ridiculous!" At lunch, Roger innocently broached the question of Hodder's eviction.
"Mother," said he, "what do you think that idiot Pottinger has been up to?
He's taken it into his wise head to threaten to turn old Hodder out of his cottage unless he pays a higher rent in future.

I went to row him about it, but he's far too dense to see what a scoundrelly thing it is." "How shocking!" said Mrs Ingleton.

"Poor old Hodder has been in that place all his life.

Your father was always fond of him, Roger.