Ethel Turner

“ An' if they gang a trifle wrang
⁠To step aside is human."
THAT was the first battle; another followed quickly on its heels; and then there came a long and sorrowful peace.
Meg had been exceedingly angry about it—and with justice. She marvelled, not only at Nellie's rebellion, but that she should care to mix with such "impossible" people, as she called them.
"It isn't as if they were merely homely and uneducated," she said; "but their vulgarity and pretentiousness are enough to make any one sick!" ”

“ Meg went upstairs, tired, dispirited. Tears smarted in her eyes from her rebuff. Nellie, she knew, was thinking hard thoughts of her; Alan had not written to-day, for some reason or other; and all the world seemed wrong. She went into her room and sat down, with a sob and some splashing tears, in the dark by the window.
[Illustration: "HER DESCENT FROM HER OWN BEDROOM WAS ALMOST EASY."]
Such a great calm sky of pale, sweet stars ”

“ For the days that intervened between the arrival of the cards and the date of the dinner-party Meg was exceedingly busy.
She had a dressmaker in the house making winter frocks for Poppet and Essie; that took up much of her time. Besides this, two great cases of quinces and apples had been sent to them from Yarrahappini, and, with Martha's help, she was converting them into jam and jelly.
Bunty also had been unwell, and from school a day or two, and Peter had one of his perverse fits upon him. She had not had time to give the Fitzroy-Brownes as much as a passing thought ”