It was a dig that, administered by himself--and administered even to poor Mrs.
Newsome--was no more than salutary; but administered by Chad--and quite logically--it came nearer drawing blood.

They HADn't a low mind--nor any approach to one; yet incontestably they had worked, and with a certain smugness, on a basis that might be turned against them.

Chad had at any rate pulled his visitor up; he had even pulled up his admirable mother; he had absolutely, by a turn of the wrist and a jerk of the far-flung noose, pulled up, in a bunch, Woollett browsing in its pride.

There was no doubt Woollett HAD insisted on his coarseness; and what he at present stood there for in the sleeping street was, by his manner of striking the other note, to make of such insistence a preoccupation compromising to the insisters.

It was exactly as if they had imputed to him a vulgarity that he had by a mere gesture caused to fall from him.