Not for anything would she have Aunt Jane think that she was laughing, so her eyes were bent demurely on her roses again.

Again Bernice, leaning forward, intercepted the glance and misinterpreted it.

When Alex turned to her to repeat Aunt Jane's explanation, she barely smiled, then relapsed into sulky silence.
Finding several other attempts at conversation received with only monosyllables, he concluded that she was not in a mood to talk, and naturally turned again to Lloyd.
He had not been out in the Valley for years, he told her.

The last visit he had made to his uncle, old Doctor Shelby, had been the summer that the Shermans had come back to Lloydsboro from New York.

He remembered passing her one day on the road.