He laughed, but as usual seemed quite candid and really to mean what he said.
“We have sympathy, my roses,” said Mr. Skimpole, “sympathy for everything. Have we not?”
“Oh, yes, papa!” cried the three daughters.
“In fact, that is our family department,” said Mr. Skimpole, “in this hurly-burly of life. We are capable of looking on and of being interested, and we do look on, and we are interested. What more can we do? Here is my Beauty daughter, married these three years. Now I dare say her marrying another child, and having two more, was all wrong in point of political economy, but it was very agreeable. We had our little festivities on those occasions and exchanged social ideas. She brought her young husband home one day, and they and their young fledglings have their nest upstairs. I dare say at some time or other Sentiment and Comedy will bring their husbands home and have their nests upstairs too. So we get on, we don’t know how, but somehow.”
She looked very young indeed to be the mother of two children, and I could not help pitying both her and them. It was evident that the three daughters had grown up as they could and had had just as little haphazard instruction as qualified them to be their father’s playthings in his idlest hours. His pictorial tastes were consulted, I observed, in their respective styles of wearing their hair, the Beauty daughter being in the classic manner, the Sentiment daughter luxuriant and flowing, and the Comedy daughter in the arch style, with a good deal of sprightly forehead, and vivacious little curls dotted about the corners of her eyes. They were dressed to correspond, though in a most untidy and negligent way.