“For months past they had not had a really kind word. The tender old voice smote upon Clive, and he burst into sudden tears. They rained upon his father’s trembling old brown hand as he stooped down and kissed it.”
“Clive felt the pathetic mood coming on again, and an immense desire to hug Lady Ann in his arms and to kiss her. How grateful are we—how touched a frank and generous heart is—for a kind word extended to us in our pain!”
“The lips of the pretty satirist who alluded to these unpleasant bygones were silenced, as they deserved to be, by Mr. Pendennis. ‘Do you think, sir, I did not know,’ says the sweetest voice in the world, ‘when you went out on your fishing excursions with Miss Amory?’ Again the flow of words is checked by the styptic previously applied.”
“‘Oh, Pen,’ says my wife, closing my mouth in a way which I do not choose further to particularize, ‘that man is the best, the dearest, the kindest creature. I never knew such a good man; you ought to put him into a book. Do you know, sir, that I felt the very greatest desire to give him a kiss when he went away? and that one which you had just now was intended for him?’”
“Laura drove to his lodgings, and took him a box, which was held up to him, as he came to open the door to my wife’s knock, by our smiling little boy. He patted the child on his golden head and kissed him. My wife wished he would have done as much for her; but he would not,—though she owned she kissed his hand. He drew it across his eyes and thanked her in a very calm and stately manner.”