ce given him an order to
paint her rare China tea-service, and her favorite muff, in one
group; and who differed entirely from the little picture-dealer.
"Fiddle-de-dee!" cried her ladyship, scornfully, on hearing Mr. Gimble's
opinion quoted one day. "The man may know something about pictures, but
he is an idiot about women. Her complexions indeed! I could make as
good a complexion for myself (we old women are painters too, in our
way, Blyth). Don't tell me about her complexion--it's her eyes! her
incomparable blue eyes, which would have driven the young men of _my_
time mad--mad, I give you my word of honor! Not a gentleman, sir, in my
youthful days--and they _were_ gentlemen then--but would have been too
happy to run away with her for her eyes alone; and what's more, to have
shot any man who said as much as 'Stop him!' Complexion, indeed,
Mr. Gimble? I'll complexion you, next time I find my way into your
picture-gallery! Take a pinch of snuff, Blyth; and never repeat nonsense
in my hearing again."

There was Mr. Bullivant, the enthusiastic young sculptor, with the mangy
flow of flaxen hair, and the plump, waxy face, who wrote poetry, and
showed, by various sonnets, that he again differed completely about the
young lady from the Dowager Countess of Brambledown and Mr. Gimble. This
gentleman sang fluently, on paper--using, by the way, a professional
epithet--about her "chiselled mouth",

"Which breathed of rapture and the balmy South."

He expatiated on

"Her sweet lips smiling at her dimpled chin,
Whose wealth of kisses gods might long to win--"

and much more to the same maudlin effect. In plain prose, the ardent
Bullivant was all for the lower part of the young lady's face, and
actually worried her, and Mr. Blyth, and everybody in the house, until
he got leave to take a cast of it.

Lastly, there was Mrs. Blyth's father; a meek old gentleman, with a
continual cold in the head; who lived on marvelously to the utmost verge
of human existence--as very poor men, with very large families, who
would be much better out of this world than in it, very often do.
There was this low-speaking, mildly-infirm, and perpetually-snuffling
engraver, who, on being asked to mention what he most admired in her,
answered that he thought it was her hair, "which was of such a nice
light brown color; or, perhaps, it might be the pleasant way in which
she carried her head, or, perhaps, her shoulders--or, perhaps, her hea