He had a sovereign balm for "colds," composed of camomile flowers, boneset, liquorice, pennyroyal and gentian root, which he sold to all comers; and it was not unnatural that a visitor with weak lungs should lodge with him.
Louis and his wife had only good things to say about Gerard Fynes; for the young man lived their life as though he was born to it.

He ate the slap-jacks, the buttermilk-pop, the pork and beans, the Indian corn on the cob, the pea-soup, and the bread baked in the roadside oven, with a relish which was not all pretence; for indeed he was as primitive as he was subtle.

He himself could not have told how much of him was true and how much was make-believe.

But he was certainly lovable, and he was not bad by nature.

Since coming to St.Saviour's he had been constant to one attraction, and he had not risked his chances with Zoe by response to the shy invitations of dark eyes, young and not so young, which met his own here and there in the parish.
Only M.Fille and Jean Jacques himself had feelings of real antagonism to him.