every lively remark made by that dear creature, with an audible snort:
which may be referable to a chronic cold in the head, but may also be
referable to indignation and contempt. And this snort being regular in
its reproduction, at length comes to be expected by the company, who
make embarrassing pauses when it is falling due, and by waiting for it,
render it more emphatic when it comes. The stoney aunt has likewise an
injurious way of rejecting all dishes whereof Lady Tippins partakes:
saying aloud when they are proffered to her, 'No, no, no, not for me.
Take it away!' As with a set purpose of implying a misgiving that if
nourished upon similar meats, she might come to be like that charmer,
which would be a fatal consummation. Aware of her enemy, Lady Tippins
tries a youthful sally or two, and tries the eye-glass; but, from the
impenetrable cap and snorting armour of the stoney aunt all weapons
rebound powerless.

Another objectionable circumstance is, that the pokey unknowns support
each other in being unimpressible. They persist in not being frightened
by the gold and silver camels, and they are banded together to defy
the elaborately chased ice-pails. They even seem to unite in some vague
utterance of the sentiment that the landlord and landlady will make a
pretty good profit out of this, and they almost carry themselves
like customers. Nor is there compensating influence in the adorable
bridesmaids; for, having very little interest in the bride, and none
at all in one another, those lovely beings become, each one of her own
account, depreciatingly contemplative of the millinery present; while
the bridegroom's man, exhausted, in the back of his chair, appears to be
improving the occasion by penitentially contemplating all the wrong he
has ever done; the difference between him and his friend Eugene, being,
that the latter, in the back of HIS chair, appears to be contemplating
all the wrong he would like to do--particularly to the present company.