Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 107, July 28th 1894

By G GE M R D TH.
Volume I.
This was a school. Small wonder if the boys, doubly sensitive under a supercilious head-master of laughter-moving invention, poised for a moment on the to and fro of a needless knockabout jig-face with chin and mouth all a-pucker for the inquisitive contest. The stout are candid puff-balls blowing in an open sea of purposeless panting, hard to stir into an elephantine surging from arm-chairs; and these are for frock-coats, and they can wear watch-chains. So these boys understood it. Murat here, Murat there, Murat everywhere, with Shalders a-burst at the small end of a trumpet, cheeks rounded to the full note of an usher's eulogy, like a roar and no mistake, arduous in the moment, throbbing beneath a schoolmaster's threadbare waistcoat, a heart all dandelions to the plucker, yellow on top with white shifts for feather-fringe; or a daisy, transferring petulance on a bath-chair wheezing and groaning—on the swing for the capture of a fare—or shall it be a fair, that too a wheeze permitted to propriety hoist on a flaxy, grinning chub. This was Shalders.
Lady Charlotte Eglett appeared. Hers was the brother, the Lord Ormont we know, a general of cavalry not a doubt, all sabretache, spurs and plumes, dashing away into a Hindoo desert like the soldier he is, a born man sword in fist. She wrote, Come to me. He is said to be married.
He spoke to her. My father was a soldier.
He too? she interposed.
Their eyes clashed.
You are the tutor for me, she added.
For your grandson, corrected he.
It was a bargain. They struck it. She glanced right and left, showing the town-bred tutor her hedges at the canter along the main road of her scheme.
His admiration of the cavalry-brother rose to a fever-point. Not good with the pen, Lady Charlotte opined; hard to beat at a sword-thrust, thought Matey. Be his pen-holder, put in the lady. I would , said he, smiling again. She split sides, convulsed in a take-offish murmur, a roll here, a roll there, rib-tickling with eyes goggling on the forefront of a sentence all rags, tags, and splutters like a jerry-builder gaping at a waste land pegged out in plots, foundations on the dig, and auctioneer prowling hither thither, hammer ready for the gone which shall spin a nobody's land into a somebody's money passing over counter or otherwise pocket to pocket, full to empty or almost empty, with a mowling choke-spark of a batter-foot all quills for the bean-feast. So they understood it.