“Exactly! a seraph’s gentle lapse⁠—a fairy’s dream. Mamma, under such circumstances, you always remind me of Titania.”

“That is because you, yourself, are so like Bottom.”

“Miss Snowe⁠—did you ever hear anything like mamma’s wit? She is a most sprightly woman of her size and age.”

“Keep your compliments to yourself, sir, and do not neglect your own size: which seems to me a good deal on the increase. Lucy, has he not rather the air of an incipient John Bull? He used to be slender as an eel, and now I fancy in him a sort of heavy dragoon bent⁠—a beefeater tendency. Graham, take notice! If you grow fat I disown you.”

“As if you could not sooner disown your own personality! I am indispensable to the old lady’s happiness, Lucy. She would pine away in green and yellow melancholy if she had not my six feet of iniquity to scold. It keeps her lively⁠—it maintains the wholesome ferment of her spirits.”