She had not been out of London for a dozen years, and the only thing to give a taste to the present dead weeks was the spice of a chronic resentment.

The sparse customers, the people she did see, were the people who were "just off"-- off on the decks of fluttered yachts, off to the uttermost point of rocky headlands where the very breeze was then playing for the want of which she said to herself that she sickened.
There was accordingly a sense in which, at such a period, the great differences of the human condition could press upon her more than ever; a circumstance drawing fresh force in truth from the very fact of the chance that at last, for a change, did squarely meet her--the chance to be "off," for a bit, almost as far as anybody.

They took their turns in the cage as they took them both in the shop and at Chalk Farm; she had known these two months that time was to be allowed in September--no less than eleven days--for her personal private holiday.

Much of her recent intercourse with Mr.Mudge had consisted of the hopes and fears, expressed mainly by himself, involved in the question of their getting the same dates--a question that, in proportion as the delight seemed assured, spread into a sea of speculation over the choice of where and how.

All through July, on the Sunday evenings and at such other odd times as he could seize, he had flooded their talk with wild waves of calculation.