Social Pictorial Satire | Page 6

a fondness that is half lover-like
and half paternal--her buxom figure, her merry bright eyes and fresh
complexion and flowing ringlets, and pursed-up lips like Cupid's bow.
Nor is he ever tired of displaying her feet and ankles (and a little more)
in gales of wind on cliff and pier and parade, or climbing the Malvern
Hills. When she puts on goloshes it nearly breaks his heart, and he
would fly to other climes! He revels in her infantile pouts and
jealousies and heart-burnings and butterfly delights and lisping
mischiefs; her mild, innocent flirtations with beautiful young swells,
whose cares are equally light.
She is a darling, and he constantly calls her so to her face. Her favourite
seaside nook becomes the mermaid's haunt; her back hair flies and
dries in the wind, and disturbs the peace of the too susceptible Punch.
She is a little amazon _pour rire_, and rides across country, and drives
(even a hansom sometimes, with a pair of magnificent young
whiskerandoes smoking their costly cigars inside); she is a toxophilite,
and her arrow sticks, for it is barbed with innocent seduction, and her
bull's-eye is the soft military heart. She wears a cricket-cap and breaks
Aunt Sally's nose seven times; she puts her pretty little foot upon the
croquet-ball--and croquet'd you are completely! With what glee she
would have rinked and tennised if he had lived a little longer!
[Illustration: "IN THE BAY OF BISCANY O"
The Last Sweet Thing in Hats and Walking-Sticks.--_Punch_,
September 27, 1862.]
She is light of heart, and perhaps a little of head! Her worst trouble is
when the captain gives the wing of the fowl to some other darling who
might be her twin-sister; her most terrible nightmare is when she
dreams that great stupid Captain Sprawler upsets a dish of trifle over
her new lace dress with the blue satin slip; but next morning she is
herself again, and rides in the Row, and stops to speak with that great
stupid Captain Sprawler, who is very nice to look at, whose back is
very beautiful, and who sprawls most gracefully over the railings, and
pays her those delightful, absurd compliments about her and her horse

"being such a capital pair," while, as a foil to so much grace and
splendour, a poor little snub-nosed, ill-dressed, ill-conditioned dwarf of
a snob looks on, sucking the top of his cheap cane in abject admiration
and hopeless envy! Then she pats and kisses the nice soft nose of
Cornet Flinders's hunter, which is "deucedly aggravating for Cornet
Flinders, you know"--but when that noble sportsman is frozen out and
cannot hunt, she plays scratch-cradle with him in the boudoir of her
father's country house, or pitches chocolate into his mouth from the oak
landing; and she lets him fasten the skates on to her pretty feet. Happy
cornet! And she plays billiards with her handsome cousin--a guardsman
at least--and informs him that she is just eighteen to his love--and
stands under the mistletoe and asks this enviable relation of hers to
show her what the garroter's hug is like; and when he proceeds to do so
she calls out in distress because his pointed waxed moustache has
scratched her pretty cheek; and when Mr. Punch is there, at dinner, she
and a sister darling pull crackers across his August white waistcoat, and
scream in pretty terror at the explosion; to that worthy's excessive
jubilation, for Mr. Punch is Leech himself, and nothing she does can
ever be amiss in his eyes!
Sometimes, indeed, she is seriously transfixed herself, and bids Mr.
Tongs, the hairdresser, cut off a long lock of her hair where it will not
be missed---and she looks so lovely under the smart of Cupid's arrow
that we are frantically jealous of the irresistible warrior for whom the
jetty tress is destined. In short, she is innocence and liveliness and
health incarnate--a human kitten.
When she marries the gilded youth with the ambrosial whiskers, their
honeymooning is like playing at being married, their heartless billings
and cooings are enchanting to see. She will have no troubles--Leech
will take good care of that; her matrimonial tiffs will be of the slightest;
hers will be a well-regulated household; the course of her conjugal love
will run smooth in spite of her little indiscretions--for, like Bluebeard's
wife, she can be curious at times, and coax and wheedle to know the
mysteries of Freemasonry, and cry because Edwin will not reveal the
secret of Mr. Percy, the horse-tamer; and how Edwin can resist such an
appeal is more than we can understand! But soon they will have a large

family, and live happy ever after, and by the time their eldest-born is
thirteen years old, the darling of fourteen years back will be a regular
materfamilias,