These performances outraged her
sense of the dignity of poor human nature, which it is easy enough to
discount, but very difficult to maintain; and made her sorry for him.
His hands were another offence to her. They were fat and podgy, with short
pointed fingers, indicative of animalism and ill-nature, the opposite of
all that is refined and beautiful--truly of necessity an offence to her.
It was at first that she had overlooked him, but after a time, when she
began to know him better, the little, fat, funny man magnetized her
attention. She could not help gravely considering him wherever she met
him, and wondering about him--wondering about them both in fact. She
wondered, for one thing, why they were so fond of eating and drinking, her
own taste in those matters being of the simplest description.
"I never deny myself anything," said Mrs. Guthrie Brimston. And she looked
like it.
Evadne wondered also at their meanness, when she saw them saving money by
borrowing the carriages of people whom she had heard them class as
"Nothing but shopkeepers, you know. We shouldn't speak to them anywhere
else." And whom they ridiculed habitually for the mispronunciation of
words, and for accents unmistakably provincial.
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