It isn't rank and that: only somehow
there are some men gentlemen and some not, and some women ladies and some
not. There's Jones now, the fifth-form master, every man sees he's a
gentleman, though he wears ever so old clothes; and there's Mr. Brown,
who oils his hair, and wears rings, and white chokers--my eyes! such
white chokers!--and yet we call him the handsome snob! And so about Aunt
Maria, she's very handsome and she's very finely dressed, only somehow
she's not the ticket, you see."
"Oh, she's not the ticket?" says the Colonel, much amused.
"Well, what I mean is--but never mind," says the boy. "I can't tell you
what I mean. I don't like to make fun of her, you know, for after all
she's very kind to me; but Aunt Ann is different, and it seems as if what
she says is more natural; and though she has funny ways of her own, too,
yet somehow she looks grander,"--and here the lad laughed again. "And do
you know, I often think that as good a lady as Aunt Ann herself, is old
Aunt Honeyman at Brighton--that is, in all essentials, you know? And she
is not a bit ashamed of letting lodgings, or being poor herself, as
sometimes I think some of our family--"
"I thought we were going to speak no ill of them," says the
Colonel, smiling.
"Well, it only slipped out unawares," says Clive, laughing, "but at
Newcome when they go on about the Newcomes, and that great ass, Barnes
Newcome, gives himself his airs, it makes me die of laughing.
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