her arms are kindly wings that wish I was a little boy like
David. I also detect in her a fearful elation, which I am unaware
of until she has passed, when it comes back to me like a faint
note of challenge. Eyes that say you never must, nose that says
why don't you? and a mouth that says I rather wish you could:
such is the portrait of Mary A---- as she and I pass by.

Once she dared to address me, so that she could boast to David
that I had spoken to her. I was in the Kensington Gardens, and
she asked would I tell her the time please, just as children ask,
and forget as they run back with it to their nurse. But I was
prepared even for this, and raising my hat I pointed with my
staff to a clock in the distance. She should have been
overwhelmed, but as I walked on listening intently, I thought
with displeasure that I heard her laughing.

Her laugh is very like David's, whom I could punch all day in
order to hear him laugh. I dare say she put this laugh into him.
She has been putting qualities into David, altering him, turning
him forever on a lathe since the day she first knew him, and
indeed long before, and all so deftly that he is still called a
child of nature. When you release David's hand he is immediately
lost like an arrow from the bow. No sooner do you cast eyes on
him than you are thinking of birds. It is difficult to believe
that he walks to the Kensington Gardens; he always seems to have
alighted there: and were I to scatter crumbs I opine he would
come and peck. This is not what he set out to be; it is all the
doing of that timid-looking lady who affects to be greatly
surprised by it. He strikes a hundred gallant poses in a day;
when he tumbles, which is often, he comes to the ground like a