"At our Cornelia's request, with our concurrence, papa is silent in the
house as to the purport of the communication made by Sir T.P.
"By the way, are you at all conscious of a sound-like absurdity in a
Christian name of three syllables preceding a surname of one? Sir
Twickenham Pryme! Cornelia's pronunciation of the name first gave me the
feeling. The 'Twickenham' seems to perform a sort of educated monkey
kind of ridiculously decorous pirouette and entrechat before the 'Pryme.'
I think that Cornelia feels it also. You seem to fancy elastic limbs
bending to the measure of a solemn church-organ. Sir Timothy? But Sir
Timothy does not jump with the same grave agility as Sir Twickenham! If
she rejects him, it will be half attributable to this.
"My own brother! I expect no confidences, but a whisper warns me that
you have not been to Stornley twice without experiencing the truth of our
old discovery, that the Poles are magnetic? Why should we conceal it
from ourselves, if it be so? I think it a folly, and fraught with
danger, for people not to know their characteristics. If they attract,
they should keep in a circle where they will have no reason to revolt at,
or say, repent of what they attract. My argumentative sister does not
coincide. If she did, she would lose her argument.
"Adieu! Such is my dulness, I doubt whether I have made my meaning
clear.
"Your thrice affectionate
"Adela.
"P.S.--Lady Gosstre has just taken Emilia to Richford for a week. Papa
starts for Bidport to-morrow."
This short and rather blunt exercise in Fine Shades was read impatiently
by Wilfrid. "Why doesn't she write plain to the sense?" he asked, with
the usual injustice of men, who demand a statement of facts, forgetting
how few there are to feed the post; and that indication and suggestion
are the only language for the multitude of facts unborn and possible.
Twilight best shows to the eye what may be.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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