William Blanchard Jerrold

“ Mournful-eyes has a voice that neither rises nor falls. She has discovered—precocious little Christian!—that all the world is very wicked. Her brothers are very, very wicked: even her mother is not all that she should be. Mournful-eyes see into very sombre sulphureous regions indeed. ”

“ I am not a marrying man. I am too homely for these sparkling, brightly-dressed ladies about me. I am of the homespun kirtle school; with a liking for the busy, useful, sunny little bodies, with their coquettish aprons and dainty kerchiefs, who loved their nurseries better than their drawing-rooms, and were vastly proud of their home-made jams and pickles in the store-closet, in the days gone by. ”

“ The fingers, in faint yellow gloves, slender as maccaroni, that turn young Dumas’ page, would not, I am certain, set that light right in my patent bachelor-kitchen. A thimble would sit awkwardly on any of those saffron digits. Wicked-eyes has a mother, I see; a tall stately dame who hopes to pass for the sister of her child. But her foot-marks in the sand are not dainty; I see the autumn withering under the stolen buds of spring. A little, timid, homely man creeps up to mother and daughter. He is the busy working bee to the elderly queen and to the young queen ”

“ When Wicked-eyes was a child he looked after her, the servants, and the luggage, while the queen bee sailed into the state cabin. Wicked-eyes hopes that he will not invite any of his city friends to mamma’s next rout. I wonder whether the simple little man can recal the days when he sate down in his bachelor chambers as it pleased him ”