"Why, what I may think after dinner," returns Mr. Jobling, "is one thing, my dear Guppy, and what I may think before dinner is another thing."

They don't mind it: its a reg'lar holiday to them - all porter and skittles.

The universe, he observed, makes rather an indifferent parent, I am afraid.

things cannot be expected to turn up of themselves. We must in a measure assist to turn them up

and, unlike the celebrated herd in the poem, they were not forty children conducting themselves as one, but every child was conducting itself like forty.

Come, then," returned the nephew gaily. "What right have you to be dismal? What reason have you to be morose? You're rich enough.

Its very pulse, if I may use the word, was like no other clock. It did not mark the flight of every moment with a gentle second stroke, as though it would check old Time, and have him stay his pace in pity, but measured it with one sledge-hammer beat, as if its business were to crush the seconds as they came trooping on, and remorselessly to clear a path before the Day of Judgment.