All this was as pleasant a manner of passing the time as any other, for it didn't prevent his old-world corner from closing round him more entirely, nor stand in the way of his making out from day to day some new source as well as some new effect of its virtue.

He was really scared at moments at some of the liberties he took in talk--at finding himself so familiar; for the great note of the place was just that a certain modern ease had never crossed its threshold, that quick intimacies and quick oblivions were a stranger to its air.

It had known in all its days no rude, no loud invasion.

Serenely unconscious of most contemporary things, it had been so of nothing so much as of the diffused social practice of running in and out.

Granger held his breath on occasions to think how Addie would run.