Page:Eliot - Felix Holt, the Radical, vol. I, 1866.djvu/139

Rh "O yes," said Felix, contemptuously. "And she reads Byron also, and admires Childe Harold—gentlemen of unspeakable woes, who employ a hairdresser, and look seriously at themselves in the glass."

Esther reddened, and gave a little toss. Felix went on triumphantly. "A fine lady is a squirrel-headed thing, with small airs and small notions, about as applicable to the business of life as a pair of tweezers to the clearing of a forest. Ask your father what those old persecuted emigrant Puritans would have done with fine-lady wives and daughters."

"O there is no danger of such misalliances," said Esther. "Men who are unpleasant companions and make frights of themselves, are sure to get wives tasteless enough to suit them."

"Esther, my dear," said Mr Lyon, "let not your playfulness betray you into disrespect towards those venerable pilgrims. They struggled and endured in order to cherish and plant anew the seeds of scriptural doctrine and of a pure discipline."

"Yes, I know," said Esther, hastily, dreading a discourse on the pilgrim fathers.

"O they were an ugly lot!" Felix burst in, making Mr Lyon start. "Miss Medora wouldn't