"He took off his hat and talked, and he'd have been talking yet if I hadn't come away.

There was no sense in what he said, good or bad." The children were at last allowed to go on with their lessons.
When the dish-washing was finished and Mrs.Rexford came into the sitting-room, Sophia took the lamp by the light of which she had been doing the family darning into the kitchen, and she and Harold established themselves there.

Harold, a quiet fellow about nineteen, was more like his half-sister than any other member of the family, and there was no need that either should explain to the other why they were glad to leave the nervous briskness of the more occupied room.

It was their habit to spend their evenings here, and Sophia arranged that Eliza should bring her own sewing and work at it under her direction.

Harold very often read aloud to them.