Mrs.M'Crawney was low-spirited and homesick, yearning for Ireland, for the smell of the peat reek and the society of her neighbours.
"I shall die if I stay here much longer.

It is stagnation, not life at all; indeed, I'd sooner be dead," moaned the poor discontented woman.
"But you have books," said Katherine, pointing to a well-filled shelf in one corner of the room.

"And if you are so lonely, why not take some girl from an orphanage for a companion?
It would be good for the child and good for you too." "Books are not satisfying, and I think it a great waste of time to be always reading," Mrs.M'Crawney replied with a touch of asperity.

Her husband's love of books and willingness to spend money upon them was always a sore point with her, only Katherine did not know that, "And I wouldn't have a strange girl about the house, not whatever.

I never could abide having to do with other people's children." "Then I am afraid you will have to go lonely," Katherine answered, feeling that it was quite beyond her powers to make any more useful suggestion to the poor unhappy woman, whose ailment consisted more in a discontented mind than a diseased body.
The M'Crawneys were such an ill-matched pair that it always gave her a feeling of irritation to go there, while Peter M'Crawney himself was too much addicted to fulsome compliments to make her willing to face him oftener than need be.