If the child ran into the fire, your aunt's too fat to overtake it: she could only sit and grunt like an alarmed sow.

But what a fool you are, Godfrey, to come out in your dancing shoes and stockings in this way--and you one of the beaux of the evening, and at your own house! What do you mean by such freaks, young fellow?
Has Miss Nancy been cruel, and do you want to spite her by spoiling your pumps ?" "Oh, everything has been disagreeable to-night.

I was tired to death of jigging and gallanting, and that bother about the hornpipes.

And I'd got to dance with the other Miss Gunn," said Godfrey, glad of the subterfuge his uncle had suggested to him.
The prevarication and white lies which a mind that keeps itself ambitiously pure is as uneasy under as a great artist under the false touches that no eye detects but his own, are worn as lightly as mere trimmings when once the actions have become a lie.
Godfrey reappeared in the White Parlour with dry feet, and, since the truth must be told, with a sense of relief and gladness that was too strong for painful thoughts to struggle with.

For could he not venture now, whenever opportunity offered, to say the tenderest things to Nancy Lammeter--to promise her and himself that he would always be just what she would desire to see him?
There was no danger that his dead wife would be recognized: those were not days of active inquiry and wide report; and as for the registry of their marriage, that was a long way off, buried in unturned pages, away from every one's interest but his own.