Elizabeth Gaskell

“ It is a very pretty colour.'
'Yes; but, papa,' (holding it out as if she was, going to dance) 'it's made of woollen, and so hot and heavy; and every day it will be getting warmer.'
'I wish girls could dress like boys,' said Mr. Gibson, with a little impatience. 'How is a man to know when his daughter wants clothes? and how is he to rig her out when he finds it out, just when she needs them most and has not got them?'
'Ah, that's the question!' said Molly, in some despair.
'Can't you go to Miss Rose's? Does not she keep ready-made frocks for girls of your age?'
'Miss Rose! ”

“ After a while he said,—'It's as well the lads are at Cambridge; we might have been having a love-affair if they had been at home.'
'Well—and if we had?' asked his more romantic wife.
'It would not have done,' said the squire, decidedly. 'Osborne will have had a first-rate education—as good as any man in the county— he'll have this property, and he's a Hamley of Hamley; not a family in the shire is as old as we are, or settled on their ground so well. ”

“ Osborne may marry where he likes. If Lord Hollingford had a daughter, Osborne would have been as good a match as she could have required. It would never do for him to fall in love with Gibson's daughter—I should not allow it. So it's as well he's out of the way.'
'Well! perhaps Osborne had better look higher.'
'"Perhaps!" I say he must.' The squire brought his hand down with a thump on the table, near him, which made his wife's heart beat hard for some minutes. ”

“ away with love! Nay, my dear, we loved each other so dearly we should never have been happy with any one else; but that's a different thing. People are not like what they were when we were young. All the love now-a-days is just silly fancy, and sentimental romance, as far as I can see.'
Mr. ”

“ Why am I to go, papa?'
'There are three old ladies sitting somewhere, and thinking about you just at this very minute; one has a distaff in her hands, and is spinning a thread; she has come to a knot in it, and is puzzled what to do with it. Her sister has a great pair of scissors in her hands, and wants—as she always does, when any difficulty arises in the smoothness of the thread—to cut it off short; but the third, who has the most head of the three, plans how to undo the knot; and she it is who has decided that you are to go to Hamley. The others are quite convinced by her arguments ”

“ Hamley, more by way of concealing her palpitation than anything else; for she was unworldly and romantic to a fault.
'No son of mine shall ever marry a wife who is richer than himself, with my good will,' said the squire again, with emphasis, but without a thump. 'I don't say but what if Roger is gaining five hundred a year by the time he's thirty, he shall not choose a wife with ten thousand pounds down ”

“ He slackened his speed, and began to think. It was very awkward, he considered, to have a motherless girl growing up into womanhood in the same house with two young men, even if she only met them at meal-times ”

“ Wynne would persevere in saying, 'May I assist you to potatoes?'—a form of speech which grated daily more and more upon Mr. Gibson's cars. Yet Mr. Coxe, the offender in this affair which had just occurred, had to remain for three years more as a pupil in Mr Gibson's family. He should be the very last of the race. Still there were three years to be got over; and if this stupid passionate calf-love of his lasted, what was to be done? Sooner or later Molly would become aware of it. The contingencies of the affair were so excessively disagreeable to contemplate, that Mr. ”