have seen, being all nature and impulse, while
Mrs. Jorrocks was all vanity and affectation. To describe her accurately
is more than we can pretend to, for she looked so different in different
dresses, that Mr. Jorrocks himself sometimes did not recognise her. Her
face was round, with a good strong brick-dust sort of complexion, a
turn-up nose, eyes that were grey in one light and green in another, and
a middling-sized mouth, with a double chin below. Mr. Jorrocks used
to say that she was "warranted" to him as twelve years younger than
himself, but many people supposed the difference of age between them was
not so great. Her stature was of the middle height, and she was of one
breadth from the shoulders to the heels. She was dressed in a flaming
scarlet satin gown, with swan's-down round the top, as also at the arms,
and two flounces of the same material round the bottom. Her turban was
of green velvet, with a gold fringe, terminating in a bunch over the
left side, while a bird-of-paradise inclined towards the right. Across
her forehead she wore a gold band, with a many-coloured glass butterfly
(a present from James Green), and her neck, arms, waist (at least
what ought to have been her waist) were hung round and studded with
mosaic-gold chains, brooches, rings, buttons, bracelets, etc., looking
for all the world like a portable pawnbroker's shop, or the lump of beef
that Sinbad the sailor threw into the Valley of Diamonds. In the right
of a gold band round her middle, was an immense gold watch, with a bunch
of mosaic seals appended to a massive chain of the same material; and a
large miniature of Mr. Jorrocks when he was a young man, with his hair
stiffly curled, occupied a place on her left side. On her right arm
dangled a green velvet bag with a gold cord, out of which one of
Mr. Jorrocks's silk handkerchiefs protruded, while a crumpled,
yellowish-white cambric one, with a lace fringe, lay at her side.

On an hour-glass stool, a little behind Mrs. Jorrocks, sat her niece
Belinda (Joe Jorrocks's eldest daughter), a nice laughing pretty girl of
sixteen, with languishing blue eyes, brown hair, a nose of the "turn-up"
order, beautiful mouth and teeth, a very fair complexion, and a
gracefully moulded figure. She had just left one of the finishing and
polishing seminaries in the neighbourhood of Bromley, where, for two
hundred a year and upwards, all the teasing accomplishments of life are
taught, and Mrs. Jorrocks, in her