Page:Eliot - Felix Holt, the Radical, vol. I, 1866.djvu/140

130 have minded if they had all been put into the pillory and lost their ears. She would have said, 'Their ears did stick out so.' I shouldn't wonder if that's a bust of one of them." Here Felix, with sudden keenness of observation, nodded at the black bust with the gauze over its coloured face.

"No," said Mr Lyon;" that is the eminent George Whitfield, who, you well know, had a gift of oratory as of one on whom the tongue of flame had rested visibly. But Providence—doubtless for wise ends in relation to the inner man, for I would not inquire too closely into minutiae which carry too many plausible interpretations for any one of them to be stable—Providence, I say, ordained that the good man should squint; and my daughter has not yet learned to bear with this infirmity."

"So she has put a veil over it. Suppose you had squinted yourself?" said Felix, looking at Esther.

"Then, doubtless, you could have been more polite to me, Mr Holt," said Esther, rising and placing herself at her work-table. "You seem to prefer what is unusual and ugly."

"A peacock!" thought Felix. "I should like to come and scold her every day, and make her cry and cut her fine hair off."