When, however, it touched her own family, she liked it no better than other people.

But she was eminently practical, and a woman of courage, who never pursued a shadow in preference to its substance.
"Your mother," she said, "will be happier if she's quite free, Val.
Good-night, my dear boy; and don't wear loud waistcoats up at Oxford, they're not the thing just now.

Here's a little present." With another five pounds in his hand, and a little warmth in his heart, for he was fond of his grandmother, he went out into Park Lane.

A wind had cleared the mist, the autumn leaves were rustling, and the stars were shining.

With all that money in his pocket an impulse to 'see life' beset him; but he had not gone forty yards in the direction of Piccadilly when Holly's shy face, and her eyes with an imp dancing in their gravity, came up before him, and his hand seemed to be tingling again from the pressure of her warm gloved hand.