Who in this humble out-of-the-way cottage could afford to wear that exquisite cambric petticoat edged with a fine and very expensive lace?
I am far from despising an honest red-flannel country petticoat. There is no warmer kinder-looking garment in the world.
It is somewhere on that pretty petticoat, I'll be bound."
At all events, it was fairly obvious that, for one reason or another, the wearer of the petticoat and stockings which have now occupied us for perhaps a sufficient number of pages, was a visitor at the cottage.
Before we go a step further in this business we must see the petticoat that made the smear, and we must know for certain when that paint was wet."
I answered that the women-servants had crowded into the room on the previous morning, and that some of their petticoats had done the mischief, "Superintendent Seegrave ordered them out, sir," I added, "before they did any more harm."
The petticoats did it, Sergeant--the petticoats did it."
It's a question of petticoats with the women--which is long.
Superintendent, when you supposed that the women-servants' petticoats smeared it."
AND she hung up all sorts and sizes of clothes-- small brown coats of mice; and one velvety black mole- skin waist-coat; and a red tail- coat with no tail belonging to Squirrel Nutkin; and a very much shrunk blue jacket belonging to Peter Rabbit; and a
petticoat, not marked, that had gone lost in the washing --and at last the basket was empty!
"It glorifies love as well as the
petticoat," Martin laughed.
You know I don't love to hear you talk about politics; they belong to us, and
petticoats should not meddle: but come, who is the man?"--"Marry!" said she, "you may find him out yourself if you please.
His soul palpitating with love of art, he painted the models who hung about the stairway of Bernini in the Piazza de Spagna, undaunted by their obvious picturesqueness; and his studio was full of canvases on which were portrayed moustachioed, large-eyed peasants in peaked hats, urchins in becoming rags, and women in bright
petticoats. Sometimes they lounged at the steps of a church, and sometimes dallied among cypresses against a cloudless sky; sometimes they made love by a Renaissance well-head, and sometimes they wandered through the Campagna by the side of an ox-waggon.
A whiff of dust from the road had blown in and she wiped her cheeks and her eyes with her soft, white handkerchief, a homemade handkerchief, fabricated from one of her old fine muslin
petticoats.
And they used to wear hooped
petticoats of such enormous size that it was quite a journey to walk round them."
