Behold the original black spider monkey!'
There stood the monkey, with sunny brown locks round the laughing
glowing face, and one white paw still lying on the scholar's
shoulder--while his face made no assurance needful that it was very
good for him! The mirror concealed behind the curtains was the
menagerie! Albinia clapped her hands with delight, and pronounced it
the most perfect of games.
'And now let us have Willie,' said Mrs. Ferrars; 'it will conduce to
the harmony of the next room.'
Willie, already initiated, hoped to puzzle papa as a platypus
ornithoryncus, but was driven to allow that it was a nondescript
animal, neither fish, flesh, nor good red-herring, useless, and very
fond of grubbing in the mud; and if it were not at Botany Bay, it
ought to be! The laughter that hailed his defence of its nose as
'well, nothing particular,' precipitated the drawing up of the
curtain and his apparition in the glass: and then Nora Nugent being
called, the inseparable Mary accompanied her, arm-in-arm, simpering
an announcement that they liked nothing so well as a pair of dear
little love-birds.
Oh, unpitying papa! to draw from the unsuspicious Nora the admission
that they were very dull little birds, of no shape at all, who always
sat hunched up in a corner without any fun, and people said their
love was all stupidity and pretence; in fact, if she had one she
should call it Silly Polly or Polly Silly!
To silence Willie's exultation in his sister's discomfiture, he was
sent to fetch Lucy, whose impersonation of an argus pheasant would
not have answered well but for a suggestion of Albinia, that she was
eyes all over for any delinquency in school.
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