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Updated: May 17, 2025
Even as children the very sight of Martha Browning's solemn face" Peregrine drew his countenance down into a portentous length "her horror at the slightest word or sport, her stiff broomstick carriage, all impelled me to the most impish tricks. And now letting alone that pock-marks have seamed her grim face till she is as ugly as Alecto she is a Precisian of the Precisians.
"How!" said Tressilian, who now for the first time interfered in their conversation; "did ye not say this Foster was married, and to a precisian?" "Married he was, and to as bitter a precisian as ever ate flesh in Lent; and a cat-and-dog life she led with Tony, as men said.
"Go, then, old precisian!" exclaimed Abou Hassan, fiercely; "cling to disgrace, and practise beggary; and yet, remember, one word can change your state, banish poverty, and summon plenty." The old man proceeded on his way, muttering inaudibly, and Abou Hassan stood watching his retreating figure. After a few moments of apparent indecision he followed the old man.
All the youths were now standing in a group in the middle of the drawing-room. Their faces showed pale and more distinct than their bodies in the darkening twilight. Mrs Orgreave, her husband, and the girls had gone into the dining-room. Tom Orgreave, with the gestures of a precisian, drew a bunch of keys from his pocket, and unlocked a rosewood bookcase that stood between the two windows.
"In Italy they always kiss hands it's rather rude not to. Let's pretend it's Italy." She was not offended; might have been pleased, in fact for Gwen was no precisian, no drawer of hard-and-fast lines in flirtation if it had not been for the black cloud that in the last few minutes had been stifling her heart.
We shall have our house in Chelsea again, and she is very welcome to share it with us if she likes. I think it is certain she won't go back to Lancashire; and the notion of her living with the Elgars is improbable." "How far does the change go?" inquired Mallard, with hesitancy. "I can't tell you, for we are neither of us in her confidence. But she is no longer a precisian.
He turned away to reach for his whisky and soda. "As a matter of curiosity," he asked, "why?" "To begin with, then," she commented, "you have become almost a precisian in your speech. You used to be rather slangy at times." "What else?" "You used always to clip your final g's." "Shocking habit," he murmured. "I cured myself of that by reading aloud in the bush. Go on, please?"
The fruits of this education became visible, when, from the sullen mansion of Puritan parents, the hotblooded, quickwitted young patrician emerged into the gay and voluptuous London of the Restoration. The most dissolute cavaliers stood aghast at the dissoluteness of the emancipated precisian. He early acquired and retained to the last the reputation of being the greatest rake in England.
A precisian in religious notions, and constant in attendance at church and lecture, he put no sort of restraint upon himself, but mixed up fox-hunting, otter-hunting, shooting at the mark, and perhaps shooting with the long-bow, foot-racing, horse-racing, and, in fact, every other kind of country diversion, not forgetting tippling, cards, and dicing, with daily devotion, discourses, and psalm-singing in the oddest way imaginable.
He abhorred all such sports as were now going forward; and had successfully interfered with the parish priest, Sir Onesimus, who was somewhat of a precisian himself, to prevent the setting up the May-pole on the past Sunday, for which, the farmer added, some of the young folks owe him a grudge; and he expressed a hope, at the same time, that the day might pass by without any exhibition being made of their ill-will towards him.
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