1.   A group of students hard at work in a lecture theatre in the University Building.

2.   Agnes looked hard at the pixie.

3.   Cook was making fresh cornbread rolls for breakfast and lesser mortals were hard at it with brooms and mops.

4.   He found it hard at first to believe that black dancers were as welcome as they seemed.

5.   He was hard at work on the translation of a play which had to be ready two days later.

6.   I suggest that these parents look long and hard at the messages they have been inadvertently conveying about reading.

7.   Sarah was hard at it on her computer.

8.   Thacker had set him a spot of overtime and he was hard at it in the mill.

9.   The bleary-eyed engineers were still hard at work when everyone else arrived the next day.

10.   The protuberance under her fingers felt soft and hard at the same time, an iron fist in a velvet glove.