So she smiled at him and said informatively:
“It means to be in intense sympathy with.”
“Oh, I see. Did you find that in the French dictionary?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, I see we'll all have to be taking up foreign languages if we're to have such an accomplished young lady in the house.”
He smiled at her in a way that made her almost glad, for a moment, that he was her father instead of a Duke who might surround her with baronial magnificence. Mother, too, she couldn't help loving, though, in her neat, practical gingham dress, she was so unlike Lady Chetwoode, the mother in “Airy Fairy Lilian.” Lady Chetwoode wore dainty caps, all white lace and delicate ribbon bows that matched in colour her trailing gown. Her small and tapering hands were covered with rings. She walked with a slow, rather stately step, and there was a benignity about her that went straight to the heart... Well, there was something about mother, too, that went straight to the heart. Missy wouldn't trade off her mother for the world.
But when, later, she wandered into the front parlour, she couldn't help wishing it were a “drawing-room.” And when she moved on out to the side porch, she viewed with a certain discontent the peaceful scene before her. Usually she had loved the side porch at the sunset hour: the close fragrance of honeysuckles which screened one end, the stretch of slick green grass and the nasturtium bed aflame like an unstirring fire, the trees rustling softly in the evening breeze—yes, she loved it all for the very tranquillity, the poignant tranquillity of it.
But that was before she realized there were in the world vast swards that swept beyond pleasure-grounds (what WERE “pleasure-grounds”?), past laughing brooklets and gurgling streams, on to the Park where roamed herds of many-antlered deer and where mighty oaks flung their arms far and wide; while mayhap, on a topmost branch, a crow swayed and swung as the soft wind rushed by, making an inky blot upon the brilliant green, as if it were a patch upon the alabaster cheek of some court belle...
Oh, enchanting!
But there were no vast swards nor pleasure-grounds nor Parks of antlered deer in Cherryvale.