At first we greeted them from sheer pity; but the parlez-vouses passed us like so many surly oxen.

Next door, with a roaring fire nine months of the year, is the housekeeper's sitting room, where you may find Mrs Grouse either armchaired and sewing or desked with a puzzlery of papers, trying, as she says, to 'make head nor tail' of things and — what seems to me contradictory — to make their ends meet.

deperditely wicked

Like a heartbeat drives you mad / In the stillness of remembering what you had / And what you lost