For both this and Mrs.Jellison's hovel were her father's property and somewhat highly rented.
Minta Hurd said eagerly that she would join the new straw-plaiting, and went on to throw out a number of hurried, half-coherent remarks about the state of the trade past and present, leaning meanwhile against the table and endlessly drying her hands on the towel she had taken up when her visitors came in.
Her manner was often nervous and flighty in these days.

She never looked happy; but Marcella put it down to health or natural querulousness of character.

Yet both she and the children were clearly better nourished, except Willie, in whom the tubercular tendency was fast gaining on the child's strength.
Altogether Marcella was proud of her work, and her eager interest in this little knot of people whose lives she had shaped was more possessive than ever.

Hurd, indeed, was often silent and secretive; but she put down her difficulties with him to our odious system of class differences, against which in her own way she was struggling.

One thing delighted her--that he seemed to take more and more interest in the labour questions she discussed with him, and in that fervid, exuberant literature she provided him with.