Slender, supple, quick of eye and limb; half shy, half defiant;
fierce of look; an indefinable kind of pause coming and going on
their whole expression, both of face and form, which might be
equally likened to the pause before a crouch or a bound. The rough
mental notes made in the first five minutes by Mr. Crisparkle would
have read thus, verbatim.
He invited Mr. Honeythunder to dinner, with a troubled mind (for
the discomfiture of the dear old china shepherdess lay heavy on
it), and gave his arm to Helena Landless. Both she and her
brother, as they walked all together through the ancient streets,
took great delight in what he pointed out of the Cathedral and the
Monastery ruin, and wondered--so his notes ran on--much as if they
were beautiful barbaric captives brought from some wild tropical
dominion. Mr. Honeythunder walked in the middle of the road,
shouldering the natives out of his way, and loudly developing a
scheme he had, for making a raid on all the unemployed persons in
the United Kingdom, laying them every one by the heels in jail, and
forcing them, on pain of prompt extermination, to become
philanthropists.
Mrs. Crisparkle had need of her own share of philanthropy when she
beheld this very large and very loud excrescence on the little
party. Always something in the nature of a Boil upon the face of
society, Mr. Honeythunder expanded into an inflammatory Wen in
Minor Canon Corner.
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