"We may have a very decent garden here in time." He looked round his little domain with the eye of a master, and put his arm, half proudly, half shyly, round his wife's shoulders--she had sidled up to him, ostensibly bringing him a letter, though possibly only for an excuse, because in those sweet early days they naturally liked to be in each other's sight continually.

It was very beautiful to see what a demure, soft, meek matronliness had come over the high spirit of the "Nut-browne Mayde." "May I read ?" she said, peeping over him.
"Of course you may, little one." A comical pet name for him to give her, who was anything but small.

I could have smiled, remembering the time when John Halifax bowed to the stately and dignified young gentlewoman who stood at Mrs.Tod's door.

To think he should ever have come to call Miss Ursula March "little one!" But this was not exactly a time for jesting, since, on reading the letter, I saw the young wife flush an angry red, and then look grave.
Until John, crumpling up the paper, and dropping it almost with a boyish frolic into the middle of a large rosemary-bush, took his wife by both her hands, and gazed down into her troubled face, smiling.
"You surely don't mind this, love?
We knew it all before.

It can make no possible difference." "No! But it is so wrong--so unjust.