At a moderate estimate there were about three and twenty sides to that lady's
character. Some men say more. She began to talk to Pluffles after the manner
of a mother, and as if there had been three hundred years, instead of fifteen,
between them. She spoke with a sort of throaty quaver in her voice which had a
soothing effect, though what she said was anything but soothing. She pointed
out the exceeding folly, not to say meanness, of Pluffles' conduct, and the
smallness of his views. Then he stammered something about "trusting to his own
judgment as a man of the world;" and this paved the way for what she wanted to
say next. It would have withered up Pluffles had it come from any other woman;
but in the soft cooing style in which Mrs. Hauksbee put it, it only made him
feel limp and repentant--as if he had been in some superior kind of church.
Little by little, very softly and pleasantly, she began taking the conceit out
of Pluffles, as you take the ribs out of an umbrella before re-covering it.
She told him what she thought of him and his judgment and his knowledge of the
world; and how his performances had made him ridiculous to other people; and
how it was his intention to make love to herself if she gave him the chance.
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