The sea was not very unpropitious, the wind seemed stationary in the north–east, the sails were hoisted, and the Henrietta ploughed across the waves like a real trans–Atlantic steamer.
The result of that unpropitious interview was that Eustacia, instead of passing the afternoon with her grandfather, hastily returned home to Clym, where she arrived three hours earlier than she had been expected.
When first I knew him, Ryecroft had reached his fortieth year; for twenty years he had lived by the pen. He was a struggling man, beset by poverty and other circumstances very unpropitious to mental work.