Something alive seemed to turn in her breast. It was the demon of mischief who lay there; he was stretching himself in lazy preparation for action and, if she was not careful, he would presently express himself in speech. Perhaps, she thought, a little, a very little, liberty would be good for him.

It isn't the young people who go to [Literary Meetings]. It's the old girls, like myself, who have nothing else to do. I've seen them sitting on the hard benches, half asleep, like fowls gone to roost.

In the hall the gas was protected by a lantern of red and blue glass, and when she entered the dining-room, a rusty fern was there, under a three-armed chandelier. One of these arms was fitted for incandescent gas which bubbled inside a frosted globe; the others were neglected and stood out gauntly like withered branches on a tree, but the room was further illuminated -- though it still seemed rather dark -- by an ordinary gas jet on eachside of the fireplace, and these flames gently hissed in their globes of pink and white. ... She wanted to stop the gas from bubbling like a turkey and hissing like a pair of geese.

Wilfrid protested, "I was only letting Miss Mole know that this is a cultured household ... We have Familiar Quotations on our bookshelves and they save a deal of trouble and hard work."
"If you're hinting that Father hasn't read as much as you have --"
... "All the same, I'll bet you he hasn't. I don't blame him. He's a busy man. He's the kind of man Familiar Quotations was made for, and he'd be a fool if he didn't take advantage of it."

It was comforting to know that God and she understood each other, she told herself, with a cynical smile for her presumption, and it was strange to think that Mr. Pilgrim was probably as sure of God's nature as she was, and, like her, made it fit his prejudices; strange that a God who had as many characters as the men and women who sought Him in times of trouble and forgot Him in their happiness, should yet have the power to give peace to bewildered spirits; strange, too, that the dreary dining-room felt like a home.