"What is it now?" said he, a little arrogantly.
She soon let him know. Directly he was quite within reach she gave him a
slap in the face that sounded like one plank falling upon another, and
marched off with an air of royal dignity, as if she had done the most
graceful and lady-like thing in all the world.
How happy are those choice spirits who can always preserve their dignity!
Percy retired red as fire, and one of his cheeks retained that high
color for the rest of the day.
CHAPTER XVIII.
APOLOGIES.
We must now describe the place to which Hope conducted his daughter, and
please do not skip our little description. It is true that some of our
gifted contemporaries paint Italian scenery at prodigious length _a
propos de bottes_, and others show in many pages that the rocks and the
sea are picturesque objects, even when irrelevant. True that others gild
the evening clouds and the western horizon merely to please the horizon
and the clouds. But we hold with Pope that
"The proper study of mankind is man,"
and that authors' pictures are bores, except as narrow frames to big
incidents.
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