It makes me feel better than a cart-load of the stuff that old Pillbags forces down our throats." "You're a-talking.

She's a lady--every inch of her--genuine, simon-pure, fast colors, all-wool, a yard wide, as fine as silk, and bright a a May morning." "And as wholesome as Spring sunshine." All unconscious that her appearance was to the invalids who looked upon her like a sweet, health-giving breeze bursting through a tainted atmosphere, Rachel passed wearily along the burning walks toward the Surgeon's office, with a growing heart-sickness at the unwelcome appearance of the task she had elected for herself.
The journey had been full of irritating discomforts.

Heat, dust, and soiled linen are only annoyances to a man; they are real miseries to a woman.

The marvel is not that Joan of Arc dared the perils of battle, but that she endured the continued wretchedness of camp uncleanliness, to the triumphant end.
With her throat parched, garments "sticky," hair, eyes, ears and nostrils filled with irritating dust, and a feeling that collar and cuffs were, as ladies phrase it, "a sight to behold," Rachel's heroic enthusiasm ebbed to the bottom.

Ushered into the Surgeon's office she was presented to a red-faced, harsh-eyed man, past the middle age, who neither rose nor apologized to her for being discovered in the undress of a hot day.