Charles Darwin talks about reaches to vertebrates clad in
crinoline, as well as to mollusks in shells, or articulates in jointed
scales, or anything that fights for breathing-room and food and love in
any coat of fur or feather! Happy they who can flash defiance from
bright eyes and snowy shoulders back into the pendants of the insolent
lustres!
----Miss Mahala Crane did not have these reflections; and no young girl
ever did, or ever will, thank Heaven! Her keen eyes sparkled under her
plainly parted hair, and the green de-laine moulded itself in those
unmistakable lines of natural symmetry in which Nature indulges a small
shopkeeper's daughter occasionally as well as a wholesale dealer's
young ladies. She would have liked a new dress as much as any other
girl, but she meant to go and have a good time at any rate.
The guests were now arriving in the drawing-room pretty fast, and the
Colonel's hand began to burn a good deal with the sharp squeezes which
many of the visitors gave it. Conversation, which had begun like a
summer-shower, in scattering drops, was fast becoming continuous, and
occasionally rising into gusty swells, with now and then a
broad-chested laugh from some Captain or Major or other military
personage,--for it may be noted that all large and loud men in the
impaved districts bear military titles.
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