PUNCH,
OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.
Vol. 107.
July 28, 1894.
LORD ORMONT'S MATE AND MATEY'S AMINTA.
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.