Robard says that you get pale and frightened every time he speaks to you, and it provokes him for you to be so timid." Jules dropped his eyes.

"I cannot help it," he exclaimed.

"He looks so grim and cross that my voice just won't come out of my throat when I open my mouth." Joyce studied him critically, with her head tipped a little to one side.
"Well, I must say," she exclaimed, finally, "that, for a boy born in America, you have the least dare about you of anybody I ever saw.

Your Uncle Martin isn't any grimmer or crosser than a man I know at home.
There's Judge Ward, so big and solemn and dignified that everybody is half way afraid of him.

Even grown people have always been particular about what they said to him.
"Last summer his little nephew, Charley Ward, came to visit him.
Charley's just a little thing, still in dresses, and he calls his uncle, Bill.