I need to get outside. I've been cooped up for days.

[…] there was no neighbourliness, worth the word, between what the postmistress called ‘our old people’ and ‘that new set’. Polite calls paid by the former on the latter were as politely returned; but at that it ended. The gulf of mutual disinterest was unbridged.

the puffings and pantings of a man running to catch a train

Szechuan extends from the Wushan Mountains in the east to the Chinsha River — the upper reaches of the Yangtse — in the west.