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"Such an unworldly, uncalculating, gossamer creature is a relief to him and an amusement. But as to advising or encouraging or occupying a serious station towards anybody or anything, it is simply not to be thought of in such a child as Skimpole." "Pray, cousin John," said Ada, who had just joined us and now looked over my shoulder, "what made him such a child?"
We were all enchanted. I felt it a merited tribute to the engaging qualities of Ada and Richard that Mr. Skimpole, seeing them for the first time, should he so unreserved and should lay himself out to be so exquisitely agreeable. The more we listened, the more gaily Mr. Skimpole talked.
"The universe," he observed, "makes rather an indifferent parent, I am afraid." "Oh! I don't know!" cried Mr. Skimpole buoyantly. "I think I do know," said Mr. Jarndyce. "Well!" cried Mr. Skimpole. But if I had mine," glancing at the cousins, "there should be no brambles of sordid realities in such a path as that.
The chimney-sweeper has all I ask, all that the butterflies possess, all that Common-sense and Business and Society deny to Harold Skimpole. He lives, he is free, he is "in the green!" I am in Coavins's! In Cursitor Street I cannot hear the streams warble, the birds chant, the music roll through the stately fane, let us say, of Lady Whittlesea's.
Skimpole, who had come down by the coach, as he frequently did without notice, and never bringing any clothes with him, but always borrowing everything he wanted. They came out with me directly to look at the boy. The servants had gathered in the hall too, and he shivered in the window-seat with Charley standing by him, like some wounded animal that had been found in a ditch.
If it is blameable in Skimpole to take the note, it is blameable in Bucket to offer the note much more blameable in Bucket, because he is the knowing man. Now, Skimpole wishes to think well of Bucket; Skimpole deems it essential, in its little place, to the general cohesion of things, that he SHOULD think well of Bucket. The state expressly asks him to trust to Bucket. And he does.
There's nothing solar about legs of beef and mutton. Mere animal satisfaction!" "Yes," said Mr. Skimpole, turning his bright face about, "this is the bird's cage. This is where the bird lives and sings. They pluck his feathers now and then and clip his wings, but he sings, he sings!" He handed us the grapes, repeating in his radiant way, "He sings! Not an ambitious note, but still he sings."
He put the money in his pocket and shortly said, "Well, then, I'll wish you a good evening, miss. "My friend," said Mr. Skimpole, standing with his back to the fire after giving up the sketch when it was half finished, "I should like to ask you something, without offence." I think the reply was, "Cut away, then!" "Did you know this morning, now, that you were coming out on this errand?" said Mr.
Skimpole gaily, innocently, and confidingly as he looked at his drawing with his head on one side, "here you see me utterly incapable of helping myself, and entirely in your hands! I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free. Mankind will surely not deny to Harold Skimpole what it concedes to the butterflies!"
Everything else that there is in this story entered into it through the unconscious or accidental energy of his genius, which broke in at every gap. But it was the tragedy of Richard Carstone that he meant, not the comedy of Harold Skimpole. He could not help being amusing; but he meant to be depressing. Another case might be taken as testing the greater seriousness of this tale.
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