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Duties of this kind had been left to dubious regular army veterans, hurriedly displaced general officers, and favored detrimentals. But if it was not restoration, it was no longer inaction, and it was at least a release from Washington. It was also evidently the result of some influence but hardly that of the Boompointers, for he knew that Susy wished to keep him at the Capital.
Starting with the assumption that everybody knows everybody, and being aware of the general dread of meeting "detrimentals," they avoid the difficulty by making no introductions.
He was but a free lance of the polished "Detrimentals," and, under this last adverse stroke of fortune, his poor cockboat was being swamped in the black waters of adversity. He had staked much upon a little campaign at the Foreign Office in London.
"I am anxious," he explained, "to see what progress has been made since last I inculcated my theories as to edibles and detrimentals." Isabel rose with a sigh. "I see that I shall have to go and superintend the matter personally," she said, "for the customs of years are too strong to be utterly overcome all at once.
"What does it mean?" she asked of Lady Mary, with whom she stood apart for a moment. "Oh, they are worked to death, paying calls, entertaining, receiving people on all sorts of business, and helping their husbands in various ways. They have no time to be selfish, rich or poor, and they have acquired the art of disposing of bores and detrimentals in short order.
You see, cousins and curates are regarded as "harmless" "detrimentals with the chill off," so to speak. His scrap of relationship throws a glimmer of possession around the one, endowing with inherent right every act of his ministry; while his "cloth" invests the other with a halo of sanctity and Platonic freedom that disarms gossip of the usual clothes-peg whereon it hangs its scandal.
She had admirers of her own, but she soon grew tired of them would have grown tired sooner if Joanna had not clucked and shoo'd them away, thus giving them the glamour of the forbidden thing. Joanna looked upon them all as detrimentals, presumptuously lifting up their eyes to Ansdore's wealth and Ellen's beauty.
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