Lizzie shot ahead, and the other boat fell astern.
Lizzie’s father, composing himself into the
easy attitude of one who had asserted the high moralities
and taken an unassailable position, slowly lighted
a pipe, and smoked, and took a survey of what he had
in tow. What he had in tow, lunged itself at
him sometimes in an awful manner when the boat was
checked, and sometimes seemed to try to wrench itself
away, though for the most part it followed submissively.
A neophyte might have fancied that the ripples passing
over it were dreadfully like faint changes of expression
on a sightless face; but Gaffer was no neophyte and
had no fancies.
THE MAN FROM SOMEWHERE
Mr and Mrs Veneering were bran-new people in a bran-new
house in a bran-new quarter of London. Everything
about the Veneerings was spick and span new.
All their furniture was new, all their friends were
new, all their servants were new, their plate was
new, their carriage was new, their harness was new,
their horses were new, their pictures were new, they
themselves were new, they were as newly married as
was lawfully compatible with their having a bran-new
baby, and if they had set up a great-grandfather,
he would have come home in matting from the Pantechnicon,
without a scratch upon him, French polished to the
crown of his head.
For, in the Veneering establishment, from the hall-chairs
with the new coat of arms, to the grand pianoforte
with the new action, and upstairs again to the new
fire-escape, all things were in a state of high varnish
and polish. And what was observable in the furniture,
was observable in the Veneerings—the surface
smelt a little too much of the workshop and was a
trifle sticky.
There was an innocent piece of dinner-furniture that
went upon easy castors and was kept over a livery
stable-yard in Duke Street, Saint James’s, when
not in use, to whom the Veneerings were a source of
blind confusion. The name of this article was
Twemlow. Being first cousin to Lord Snigsworth,
he was in frequent requisition, and at many houses
might be said to represent the dining-table in its
normal state. Mr and Mrs Veneering, for example,
arranging a dinner, habitually started with Twemlow,
and then put leaves in him, or added guests to him.
Sometimes, the table consisted of Twemlow and half
a dozen leaves; sometimes, of Twemlow and a dozen
leaves; sometimes, Twemlow was pulled out to his utmost
extent of twenty leaves. Mr and Mrs Veneering
on occasions of ceremony faced each other in the centre
of the board, and thus the parallel still held; for,
it always happened that the more Twemlow was pulled
out, the further he found himself from the center,
and nearer to the sideboard at one end of the room,
or the window-curtains at the other.
