Henry Handel Richardson

“ Jinny hardly glanced at her sister: it was Mary she wanted, Mary's hand she fumbled for while she told her trouble. "It's the children, Mary," she whispered. "I can't die happy because of the children. John doesn't understand them." Jinny's whole existence was bound up in the three little ones she had brought into the world. ”

“ I tell you I mean to go to sea." And as he said it his lip shot out, and suddenly, for all his limpid blue eyes and flaxen hair, it was his father's face that confronted Mary.
"He wouldn't think it respectable enough, dear. He wants you to rise higher in the world, and to make money. You must remember who he is."
"Bosh!" said Johnny. "Look at Uncle Ned . . . and Uncle Jerry . . . and the governor himself. He didn't have to sit in a beastly old hole of an office when he was my age."
"That was quite different," said Mary weakly. ”

“ Mary, making lace over a pillow, looked up at this, a trifle apprehensively. "What things you do say! If any one heard you, they'd think you weren't very. . . very religious." Her fear lest Richard's outspokenness should be mistaken for impiety never left her.
Tilly was plain and to the point. "Like a bear with a sore back that's what 'e is, since 'e can't get down among his blessed birds. He leads Tom the life of the condemned, over the feeding of those bantams. As if the boy could help 'em not laying when they ought!"
At thirty-six Tilly was the image of her mother. ”