Were in that parrot’s head;
It took two men to understand
One half the things she said.”
The two princesses in the story of Riquet with the Tuft were not more unlike than Joey and Matilda.
The appearance of Matilda is Quakerish, and even shabby. She has an eye like a piece of dull green marble. She is affectionate and polite, but cold and passionless. To judge by the perfect and consistent propriety of her demeanour she might have been a favourite pupil of Mrs. General. Even if she swears or blows her nose she does it with an air of such intense superiority that it seems like an answer in the Catechism.
It is small wonder that Matilda feels superior, for her intellect is supreme. She is not proud of this, for she is too well-bred to wish to dazzle strangers with her brilliance, and her chief flow of conversation is reserved for the circle of her intimates. She came to pay me a visit the other day and was very reticent. “She is too much of a lady to talk to us,” my old nurse said; but though she would not hastily confide, she tried to keep up our spirits by a little innocent amusement; and after bleating like a lamb for a quarter of an hour on end, she gave us A flat on the tuning-fork till tea time.
Now, Joey is all green and gold to the eye. He recollects the Valley of the Amazon, and “bright and fierce and fickle is the south.” His topaz iris waxes and wanes as the pupil grows large and onyx-like or dwindles to a mere pin’s head. He loves passionately, and his hate, deep as the Black Sea, is vindictive and remorseless. Music works in him a frenzy of delight; the sight of friend or foe fills him with an emotion which chokes utterance. Jealousy runs like swift poison in his veins, swiftest and most poisonous when he thinks of Matilda, finished, feminine, and intellectual, a perfect lady.
Photograph by S. A. McDowall