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We had one real enemy on the Corso; for our former friend Mrs. T was there, and as often as we passed and repassed her, she favored us with a handful of lime. Two or three times somebody ran by the carriage and puffed forth a shower of winged seeds through a tube into our faces and over our clothes; and, in the course of the afternoon, we were hit with perhaps half a dozen sugar-plums.
They were ready enough to pamper him, like a lap-dog, these good ladies; forgetting he was a man, with a man's heart and brain, making demand for something more than carefully chosen sugar-plums. He had never been so thankful to get away from that hospitable house, where he had imagined himself so happy....
One, being in haste, did skewer his tongue to his palate with it, I hear; O tempora, O mores! The ancients, reclining godlike at their feasts, how had they spurned such pedantries." As soon as the ladies had disported themselves among the sugar-plums, the tables were suddenly removed, and the guests sat in a row against the wall.
"What I meant was it reminded me of old Turner, you know, messing about with coloured sugar-plums." "A colour-scheme?" said Mac, light dawning in his puzzled face. "That's it, that's the word: colour-scheme," said Mr. Carville. "I'd forgotten the word." And he handed the drawing back. "You wonder at a seafaring man coming out here to live?" "It's a very healthy district," I suggested. "Mrs.
Presently a sickly, gentle-looking man entered, in a suit of black camlet, and carrying an umbrella; he took a seat by the children, and ran his fingers through his hair, which already stood upright. "That girl gave Sis some sugar-plums," remarked the boy. "I hope you thanked her, Clarissa," said the father. "No; she didn't give me enough," the child answered.
Conceive twenty thousand grown people in a long street, at the windows, on the footways, and in carriages, amused day after day for several hours in pelting and being pelted with handfuls of mock or real sugar-plums; and this no name or presence, but real downright showers of plaster comfits, from which people guard their eyes with meshes of wire.
When told of Lily's marriage, she had thrown up her hands with surprise, for she had still left in some corner of her drawers remnants of sugar-plums which she had bought for Lily. "A London man, is he? Well, well. I wish he lived in the country. Eight hundred a year, my dear?" she had said to Mrs Dale. "That sounds nice down here, because we are all so poor.
"The old blue china dragon is one of her earliest recollections. It used to sit on a cabinet in her grandmother's room, and there were always sugar-plums in it, as there have been ever since it was given to her. I can remember it myself when I was a boy. One of the pleasures of my visit to the old house was listening in the firelight to grandfather's 'dragon tales, as we called them.
"I sees Miss Anna, too," said a third, though, as yet, not a face was visible to one of them. They put their heads out of the carriage, notwithstanding, to speak to them, and Alice emptied a good-sized basket of sugar-plums, which she had bought for the purpose, over their heads. "Take care, Mark," said Mr. Weston, "don't cut about with that whip, while all these children are so near."
Lucy had been engaged the while with the children, and when the two married ladies entered, they found that a shop had been opened at which all manner of luxuries were being readily sold and purchased at marvellously easy prices; the guava jelly was there, and the oranges, and the sugar-plums, red and yellow and striped; and, moreover, the gingerbread had been taken down in the audacity of their commercial speculations, and the nuts were spread out upon a board, behind which Lucy stood as shop-girl, disposing of them for kisses.
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