It seemed somehow to cut her off from her own folk.
'John is late!' said a voice beside her.

An elderly woman had stepped out of the cottage porch.

Miss Anna Mason, the head-mistress of an endowed girls school in Hawkshead, had come to spend a Saturday afternoon with her old pupil, Phoebe Fenwick.

A masterful-looking woman--ample in figure, with a mouth of decision.

She wore a grey alpaca dress, adorned with a large tatted collar, made by herself, and fastened by a brooch containing a true-lover's knot in brown hair.
'He'll have stayed on to finish,' said Phoebe, looking round.