did not at all care what others thought. Mr. Donne, he favoured with hints about his extreme meagreness, allusions to his turned-up nose, cutting sarcasms on a certain threadbare chocolate surtout, which that gentleman was accustomed to sport whenever it rained, or seemed likely to rain, and criticisms on a choice set of cockney phrases, and modes of pronunciation, Mr. Donne’s own property, and certainly deserving of remark for the elegance and finish they communicated to his style.
Mr. Sweeting was bantered about his stature, he was a little man, a mere boy in height and breadth compared with the athletic Malone, rallied on his musical accomplishments, he played the flute and sang hymns like a seraph (some young ladies of his parish thought), sneered at as “the lady’s pet,” teased about his mama and sisters, for whom poor Mr. Sweeting had some lingering regard, and of whom he was foolish enough now and then to speak in the presence of the priestly Paddy, from whose anatomy the bowels of natural affection had somehow been omitted.
The victims met these attacks each in his own way, Mr. Donne with a stilted self-complacency, and half-sullen phlegm, the sole props of his otherwise somewhat rickety dignity; Mr. Sweeting, with the indifference of a light, easy disposition, which never professed to have any dignity to maintain.
When Malone’s raillery became rather too offensive, which it soon did, they joined in an attempt to
