Page:Essays in miniature.djvu/155

 Rh young ladies, instead of hustling into corners and staring owlishly, after the fashion of those awkward little boys I know. And he is so very, very good! Not consciously and morbidly virtuous like that baby prig, Little Saint Elizabeth, who comes from the same hands, but artlessly and inevitably correct. He gives all his money to pay poor Michael's rent, and we rejoice rightly in his generosity, with only one wistful recollection of that vastly different specimen of boyhood, for whose misdeeds Mr. Aldrich is responsible, and who spends his funds gloriously in indigestible treats to his friends. It is very charming in Lord Fauntleroy to offer his eager plea in behalf of the farmer Higgins, and probably just what any warm-hearted child would have done in his place; but we cannot but contrast his wonderful unconsciousness afterward, "not realizing his own importance in the least," with the familiar figure of little Paul Dombey strutting up and down the room at Brighton, full of the new-blown dignity of being a financier, and lending young Gay the money for his uncle.