My smile is sweet when I desire to make it
so. I never was perhaps exactly pretty, but I was always admitted to be
fascinating. Dr Skinner is a very handsome man--too good on the whole I
should say for Mrs Skinner. Theobald says he is not handsome, but men
are no judges, and he has such a pleasant bright face. I think my bonnet
became me. As soon as I get home I will tell Chambers to trim my blue
and yellow merino with--" etc., etc.
All this time the letter which has been given above was lying in
Christina's private little Japanese cabinet, read and re-read and
approved of many times over, not to say, if the truth were known,
rewritten more than once, though dated as in the first instance--and
this, too, though Christina was fond enough of a joke in a small way.
Ernest, still in Mrs Jay's room mused onward. "Grown-up people," he said
to himself, "when they were ladies and gentlemen, never did naughty
things, but he was always doing them. He had heard that some grown-up
people were worldly, which of course was wrong, still this was quite
distinct from being naughty, and did not get them punished or scolded.
His own Papa and Mamma were not even worldly; they had often explained to
him that they were exceptionally unworldly; he well knew that they had
never done anything naughty since they had been children, and that even
as children they had been nearly faultless.
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