"I am not counselling young gentlemen to run away with young ladies from boarding-schools, my dear. But--I'm afraid this has been a marriage wholly of interest and ambition on his side. Ah! I hoped better things of Errington." And the doctor went on shaking his head for full a minute. Said Mrs. Smith to Mrs. Dockett, "What do you think of the bride?" Said Mrs. Dockett to Mrs. Smith, "A stuck-up, unpleasant little thing! And I do wish somebody would tell her to keep her gown on her shoulders. I assure you, if I were to see my Ally half undressed in that fashion, I should box her ears. And Ally has a very pretty pair of shoulders, though I say it. She is not a bag of bones, like Mrs. Algernon, at all events." Said Miss Chubb to her old woman servant, "Well, the Honourable Mrs. Algernon Errington is very _distangy_ looking, Martha. That's a French word that means--means out of the common, aristocratic, you know. Very _distangy_, certainly! But she lacks sentiment, in my opinion. And her outline is very sharp, Martha. I prefer a rounder contour, both of face and figure. Some of the ladies found fault with her because of her low dress. But that--as I happen to know--is quite the custom with our upper classes in town. Mrs. Figgins's--wife of the Bishop of Plumbunn, you know, Martha--Mrs. Figgins's sister, who married Sir William Wick, of the Honourable Company of Tallow Chandlers, I believe--that's a kind of City society for dining sumptuously, Martha; you mustn't suppose it has anything to do with selling tallow candles! Well, Lady Wick sat down to dinner in low, every day of her life!" Mr. Diamond and young Pawkins walked a little way together from the doctor's house to the "Blue Bell" inn. The master of Pudcombe Hall, on attempting to resume his acquaintance with the bride, had been received with scant courtesy. But this was not so much because Castalia intended to be specially uncivil to him, as because at that moment it happened, unfortunately, that she saw her husband in a distant part of the room talking to Minnie Bodkin with an air of animation. "By Jove!" cried the ingenuous Pawkins, "I don't envy Errington. His wife looks so uncommon ill-tempered, and turns up her honourable nose at everybody." "She does not turn up her nose at him," returned Diamond. "And Errington will not be over sensitive on behalf of his friends." "Oh, well! But she's so crabbed, somehow. One expects a bride to have some kind of softness in her manners, and--hang it all, there's not a particle of romance about her." "My dear fellow, if there is in the United Kingdom a young man of three-and-twenty who can comfortably dispense with romance in his wife, our friend Errington is that young man." "Oh, well! I know Errington's a very clever fellow, and all that, and perhaps I'm a fool. But I--I shouldn't like my wife to be quite so cool and cutting in her manners, that's all!" "Neither should I. And perhaps I'm a fool!"