"You were born to the purple of you were a Lesley. Even the pedigrees of their cats were known." Chapter 1, p. 10

"Cloud of Spruce, the original Lesley homestead ... was on the harbor shore, far enough out of Harmony village to be in the real country; a cream brick house - a nice chubby old house - so covered with vines that it looked more like a heap of ivy than a house; a house that had folded its hands and said 'I will rest.'" Ibid, p. 10 (2)

"Her arms, that had reached out so emptily in the silence of the night, were filled again. The fields and hills around Cloud of Spruce that had been so stark and bare and chill when her little lady came were green and golden now, spilled over with blossoms ... one could not be altogether unhappy, in springtime, with such a wonderful, unbelievable...