er bed-time, like a
greatly overgrown cherub who had sat up aloft much too long.

The Doctor was a portly gentleman in a suit of black, with strings
at his knees, and stockings below them. He had a bald head, highly
polished; a deep voice; and a chin so very double, that it was a wonder
how he ever managed to shave into the creases. He had likewise a pair of
little eyes that were always half shut up, and a mouth that was always
half expanded into a grin, as if he had, that moment, posed a boy, and
were waiting to convict him from his own lips. Insomuch, that when the
Doctor put his right hand into the breast of his coat, and with his
other hand behind him, and a scarcely perceptible wag of his head, made
the commonest observation to a nervous stranger, it was like a sentiment
from the sphynx, and settled his business.

The Doctor's was a mighty fine house, fronting the sea. Not a joyful
style of house within, but quite the contrary. Sad-coloured curtains,
whose proportions were spare and lean, hid themselves despondently
behind the windows. The tables and chairs were put away in rows, like
figures in a sum; fires were so rarely lighted in the rooms of ceremony,
that they felt like wells, and a visitor represented the bucket; the
dining-room seemed the last place in the world where any eating or
drinking was likely to occur; there was no sound through all the house
but the ticking of a great clock in the hall, which made itself audible
in the very garrets; and sometimes a dull cooing of young gentlemen
at their lessons, like the murmurings of an assemblage of melancholy
pigeons.

Miss Blimber, too, although a slim and graceful maid, did no soft
violence to the gravity of the house. There was no light nonsense about
Miss Blimber. She kept her hair short and crisp, and wore spectacles.
She was dry and sandy with working in the graves of deceased languages.
None of your live languages for Miss Blimber. They must be dead--stone
dead--and then Miss Blimber dug them up like a Ghoul.

Mrs Blimber, her Mama, was not learned herself, but she pretended to
be, and that did quite as well. She said at evening parties, that if she
could have known Cicero, she thought she could have died contented. It
was the steady joy of her life to see the Doctor's young gentlemen go
out walking, unlike all other young gentlemen, in the largest possible
shirt-collars, and the stiffest possible cravats. It was so classical,
she said.

As to Mr