itting; of the way that in those days her attention used
to leap like a lion on the shy beast Beauty hiding in the bush, the
housewifely briskness with which her soul took this beauty and simmered
it in the pot of meditation into a meal that nourished life for days. At
the thought of the premature senility that had robbed her of these
accomplishments now that she was seventeen she began again to weep....

The door opened and Mr. Mactavish James lumbered in, treading bearishly
on his soft slippers, and rubbing the gold frame of his spectacles
against his nose to allay the irritation they had caused by their
persistent pressure during the interview he had been holding with the
representative of another firm: an interview in which he had disguised
his sense of his client's moral instability by preserving the most
impressive physical immobility. The air of the room struck cold on him,
and he went to the fireplace and put on some coal, and sat down on a
high stool where he could feel the warmth. He gloomed over it, pressing
his hands on his thighs; decidedly Todd was in the wrong over this right
of way, and Menzies & Lawson knew it. He looked dotingly across at
Ellen, breathed "Well, well!"--that greeting by which Scot links himself
to Scot in a mutual consciousness of a prudent despondency about life.
Age permitted him, in spite of his type, to delight in her. In his youth
he had turned his back on romance, lest it should dictate conduct that
led away from prosperity, or should alter him in some manner that would
prevent him from attaining that ungymnastic dignity which makes the
respected townsman. He had meant from the first to end with a paunch.
But now wealth was inalienably his and Beauty could beckon him on no
strange pilgrimages, his soul retraced its steps and contemplated this
bright thing as an earth creature might creep to the mouth of its lair
and blink at the sun. And there was more than that to it. He loved her.
He had never had enough to do with pitiful things (his wife Elizabeth
had been a banker's daughter), and this, child had come to him, that day
in June, so white, so weak, so chilled to the bone, for all the summer
heat, by her monstrous ill-usage....

He said, "Nelly, will your mother be feared if you stop and take a few
notes for Mr. Philip till eight? There is a chemist body coming through
from the cordite works at Aberfay who can't come in the day but Saturday
mornings, and you ken Mr. Philip's away