Here was an occasion, she thought, for indulging in that deliberate rudeness which only persons with habitually good manners have the right to commit.

Here was an occasion, she thought, for indulging in that deliberate rudeness which only persons with habitually good manners have the right to commit.

Dawn crept over the Downs like a sinister white animal, followed by the snarling cries of a wind eating its way between the black boughs of the thorns. The wind was the furious voice of this sluggish animal light that was baring the dormers and mullions and scullions of Cold Comfort Farm.

You have the most revolting Florence Nightingale complex,' said Mrs. Smiling. It is not that at all, and well you know it. On the whole, I dislike my fellow beings; I find them so difficult to understand. But I have a tidy mind and untidy lives irritate me. Also, they are uncivilized.

And when April like an over-lustful lover leaped upon the lush flanks of the Downs there would be yet another child in the wretched hut down on Nettle Flitch Field, where Meriam housed the fruits of her shame.

Flora sighed. It was curious that persons who lived what the novelists called a rich emotional life always seemed to be a bit slow on the uptake.

Curious how Love destroys every vestige of that politeness which the human race, in its years of evolution, has so painfully acquired.