The Newcomes: Memoirs of a Most Respectable FamilyThackeray, William Makepeace
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The Newcomes: Memoirs of a Most Respectable Family
Thackeray, William Makepeace
Domestic fiction; Families -- England -- Fiction
All the time we have been making this sketch Ethel is standing, looking
at Clive; and the blushing youth casts down his eyes before hers. Her
face assumes a look of arch humour. She passes a slim hand over the
prettiest lips and a chin with the most lovely of dimples, thereby
indicating her admiration of Mr. Clive’s mustachios and imperial. They
are of a warm yellowish chestnut colour, and have not yet known the
razor. He wears a low cravat; a shirt-front of the finest lawn, with
ruby buttons. His hair, of a lighter colour, waves almost to his “manly
shoulders broad.” “Upon my word; my dear Colonel,” says Lady Kew, after
looking at him, and nodding her head shrewdly, “I think we were right.”
“No doubt right in everything your ladyship does, but in what
particularly?” asks the Colonel.
“Right to keep him out of the way. Ethel has been disposed of these ten
years. Did not Anne tell you? How foolish of her! But all mothers like
to have young men dying for their daughters. Your son is really the
handsomest boy in London. Who is that conceited-looking young man in
the window? Mr. Pen—what? has your son really been very wicked? I was
told he was a sad scapegrace.”
“I never knew him do, and I don’t believe he ever thought, anything
that was untrue, or unkind, or ungenerous,” says the Colonel. “If any
one has belied my boy to you, and I think I know who his enemy has
been——”
“The young lady is very pretty,” remarks Lady Kew, stopping the
Colonel’s further outbreak. “How very young her mother looks! Ethel, my
dear! Colonel Newcome must present us to Mrs. Mackenzie and Miss
Mackenzie;” and Ethel, giving a nod to Clive, with whom she has talked
for a minute or two, again puts her hand in her uncle’s, and walks
towards Mrs. Mackenzie and her daughter.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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