And thus sitting, a watch in his hand, fat, and smooth, and golden, like
a flattened globe of butter, he thought of nothing.
A long man, with side whiskers, who had once been in Swithin's service,
but was now a greengrocer, entered and proclaimed:
"Mrs. Chessman, Mrs. Septimus Small!"
Two ladies advanced. The one in front, habited entirely in red, had
large, settled patches of the same colour in her cheeks, and a hard,
dashing eye. She walked at Swithin, holding out a hand cased in a long,
primrose-coloured glove:
"Well! Swithin," she said, "I haven't seen you for ages. How are you?
Why, my dear boy, how stout you're getting!"
The fixity of Swithin's eye alone betrayed emotion. A dumb and grumbling
anger swelled his bosom. It was vulgar to be stout, to talk of being
stout; he had a chest, nothing more. Turning to his sister, he grasped
her hand, and said in a tone of command:
"Well, Juley."
Mrs. Septimus Small was the tallest of the four sisters; her good, round
old face had gone a little sour; an innumerable pout clung all over
it, as if it had been encased in an iron wire mask up to that evening,
which, being suddenly removed, left little rolls of mutinous flesh all
over her countenance.
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