Their Cocksmoor children could not go home to dinner between service and afternoon school, and Margaret had desired the cook to serve them up some broth in the back kitchen, to which the brother and sister were now to invite them.

Mary was allowed to take her boots to Rebekah Watts, since Margaret held that goodness had better be profitable, at least at the outset; and Harry and Tom joined the party.
Norman, meantime, was driving his father--a holiday preferment highly valued in the days when Dr.May used only to assume the reins, when his spirited horses showed too much consciousness that they had a young hand over them, or when the old hack took a fit of laziness.

Now, Norman needed Richard's assurance that the bay was steady, so far was he from being troubled with his ancient desire, that the steed would rear right up on his hind legs.
He could neither talk nor listen till he was clear out of the town, and found himself master of the animal, and even then the words were few, and chiefly spoken by Dr.May, until after going along about three miles of the turnpike road, he desired Norman to turn down a cross-country lane.
"Where does this lead ?" "It comes out at Abbotstoke, but I have to go to an outlying farm." "Papa," said Norman, after a few minutes, "I wish you would let me do my Greek." "Is that what you have been pondering all this time?
What, may not the bonus Homerus slumber sometimes ?" "It is not Homer, it is Euripides.

I do assure you, papa, it is no trouble, and I get much worse without it." "Well, stop here, the road grows so bad that we will walk, and let the boy lead the horse to meet us at Woodcote." Norman followed his father down a steep narrow lane, little better than a stony water-course, and began to repeat, "If you would but let me do my work! I've got nothing else to do, and now they have put me up, I should not like not to keep my place." "Very likely, but--hollo--how swelled this is!" said Dr.May, as they came to the bottom of the valley, where a stream rushed along, coloured with a turbid creamy yellow, making little whirlpools where it crossed the road, and brawling loudly just above where it roared and foamed between two steep banks of rock, crossed by a foot-bridge of planks, guarded by a handrail of rough poles.

The doctor had traversed it, and gone a few paces beyond, when, looking back, he saw Norman very pale, with one foot on the plank, and one hand grasping the rail.