I can see Nancy's eyes, just
as they will look at me, and feel her hand in mine already?'
But Anxiety went on, though in noisy Christmas company; refusing to
be utterly quieted even by much drinking.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
SOME women, I grant, would not appear to advantage seated on a
pillion, and attired in a drab joseph and a drab beaver-bonnet, with a
crown resembling a small stew-pan; for a garment suggesting a
coachman's greatcoat, cut out under an exiguity of cloth that would
only allow of miniature capes, is not well adapted to conceal
deficiencies of contour, nor is drab a colour that will throw sallow
cheeks into lively contrast. It was all the greater triumph to Miss
Nancy Lammeter's beauty that she looked thoroughly bewitching in
that costume, as, seated on a pillion behind her tall, erect father,
she held one arm round him, and looked down, with open-eyed anxiety,
at the treacherous snow-covered pools and puddles, which sent up
formidable splashings of mud under the stamp of Dobbin's foot. A
painter would, perhaps, have preferred her in those moments when she
was free from self-consciousness; but certainly the bloom on her
cheeks was at its highest point of contrast with the surrounding
drab when she arrived at the door of the Red House, and saw Mr Godfrey
Cass ready to lift her from the pillion. She wished her sister
Priscilla had come up at the same time with the servant, for then
she would have contrived that Mr Godfrey should have lifted off
Priscilla first, and, in the meantime, she would have persuaded her
father to go round to the horseblock instead of alighting at the
doorsteps.
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