Page:The Complete Works of William Makepeace Thackeray Vol.20.pdf/103

Rh marians have defined as substantive and adjective nouns ? if not, perhaps Mr. Ferdinand Timmins will instruct you." And Timmins hops over Hulker's head.

I wish Prince would leave off girding at the poor lad. He is a boy, and his mother is a widow woman, who loves him with all her might. There is a famous sneer about the suckling of fools and the chronieling of small beer; but remember it was a rascal who uttered it.

4 TRE gentlemen, and especially the younger and more tender of these pupils, will have the advantage of the con- stant superintendence and affectionate care of Miss Zoe Birch, sister of the principal: whose dearest aim will be to supply (as far as may be) the absent maternal friend."—Prospectus of Rodwell Regis School.

This is all very well in the Doctor's prospectus, and Miss Zoe Birch- (a pretty blossom it is, fifty-five years old, during two score of which she has dosed herself with pills; with a nose as red and a face as sour as a crab-apple)—this is all mighty well in a prospectus. But I should like to know who would take Miss Zoe for a mother, or would have her for one ?

The only persons in the house who are not afraid of her are Miss Rosa and I-no, I am afraid of her, though I do know the story about the French usher in 1830-but all the rest tremble before the woman, from the Doctor down to poor Francis, the knife-boy, whom she bullies into his miserable blacking-hole.

The Doctor is a pompous and outwardly severe man—but inwardly weak and easy: loving a joke and a glass of port-wine. I get on with him, therefore, much better than Mг. Prince, who scorns him for an ass, and under whose keen eyes the worthy Doctor writhes like a convicted impostor; and many a sunshiny afternoon would he have said, " Mr. T., sir, shall we try another glass of that yellow sealed wine which you seem to like ? " (and which he likes even better than I do) had not the old harridan of a Zoe been down upon us, and insisted on turning me out with her abominable weak coffee. She a mother, indeed! A sour-milk generation she would have nursed. She is al-