[Proud, too, you little soft-voiced woman! Well, I can't say I
like you any the worse for it. How long will school-keeping take
to kill you? Is it possible the poor thing works with her needle,
too? I don't like those marks on the side of her forefinger.
Tableau. Chamouni. Mont Blanc in full view. Figures in the
foreground; two of them standing apart; one of them a gentleman
of--oh,--ah,--yes! the other a lady in a white cashmere, leaning on
his shoulder.--The ingenuous reader will understand that this was
an internal, private, personal, subjective diorama, seen for one
instant on the background of my own consciousness, and abolished
into black nonentity by the first question which recalled me to
actual life, as suddenly as if one of those iron shop-blinds (which
I always pass at dusk with a shiver, expecting to stumble over some
poor but honest shop-boy's head, just taken off by its sudden and
unexpected descent, and left outside upon the sidewalk) had come
down in front of it "by the run."]
--Should you like to hear what moderate wishes life brings one to
at last? I used to be very ambitious,--wasteful, extravagant, and
luxurious in all my fancies.
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