I was not looking at the picture, said Ethel, still with a smile, but at the little green ticket in the corner
Sold, said Lady Kew. Of course it is sold; all Mr. Hunts pictures are sold. There is not one of them here on which you wont see the green ticket. He is a most admirable artist. I dont know whether his comedy or tragedy are the most excellent
I think, grandmamma, Ethel said, we young ladies in the world, when we are exhibiting, ought to have little green tickets pinned on our backs, with Sold written on them; it would prevent trouble and any future haggling, you know. Then at the end of the season the owner would come to carry us home strap on shopping
male strap on for double penetration
Grandmamma only said, Ethel, you are a fool, and hobbled on to Mr. Cattermoles picture hard by. What splendid colour; what a romantic gloom; what a flowing pencil and dexterous hand! Lady Kew could delight in pictures, applaud good poetry, and squeeze out a tear over a good novel too. That afternoon, young Dawkins, the rising water-colour artist, who used to come daily to the gallery and stand delighted before his own piece, was aghast to perceive that there was no green ticket in the corner of his frame, and he pointed out the deficiency to the keeper of the pictures. His landscape, however, was sold and paid for, so no great mischief occurred. On that same evening, when the Newcome family assembled at dinner in Park Lane, Ethel appeared with a bright green ticket pinned in the front of her white muslin frock, and when asked what this queer fancy meant, she made Lady Kew a curtsey, looking her full in the face, and turning round to her father, said, I am a tableau-vivant, papa. I am Number 46 in the Exhibition of the Gallery of Painters in Water-colours srapons
My love, what do you mean? says mamma; and Lady Kew, jumping up on her crooked stick with immense agility, tore the card out of Ethels bosom, and very likely would have boxed her ears, but that her parents were present and Lord Kew announced.
Ethel talked about pictures the whole evening, and would talk of nothing else. Grandmamma went away furious. She told Barnes, and when everybody was gone there was a pretty row in the building, said Madam Ethel, with an arch look, when she narrated the story. Barnes was ready to kill me and eat me; but I never was afraid of Barnes And the biographer gathers from this little anecdote, narrated to him, never mind by whom, at a long subsequent period, that there had been great disputes in Sir Brian Newcomes establishment, fierce drawing-room battles, whereof certain pictures of a certain painter might have furnished the cause, and in which Miss Newcome had the whole of the family forces against her. That such battles take place in other domestic establishments, who shall say or shall not say? Who, when he goes out to dinner, and is received by a bland host with a gay shake of the hand, and a pretty hostess with a gracious smile of welcome, dares to think that Mr. Johnson upstairs, half an hour before, was swearing out of his dressing-room at Mrs. Johnson, for having ordered a turbot instead of a salmon, or that Mrs. Johnson now talking to Lady Jones so nicely about their mutual darling children, was crying her eyes out as her maid was fastening her gown, as the carriages were actually driving up? The servants know these things, but not we in the dining-room. Hark with what a respectful tone Johnson begs the clergyman present to say grace!