36
                       The Rawlings family.
tive of worldliness and ill-temper.     Their mutual
production, the boy Fred, was forward, appro-
bative and talkative, his manner having all the
familiarity and friendliness of constitutional in-
sincerity.   (Children can be and commonly were,
just as big hypocrites as grown
people.)     Rawlings himself (I must put him in)
the perfect development of a peculiar stock, is a
man of middle size and stature, not particularly
noticeable in any respect, his face not ill-looking
but certainly not handsome.    His hair thinnish,
his eyes of a dubious blue-gray, his face without
much color, his side-whiskers not luxuriant,
his scanty mustaches waxed or gummed at the
ends into little upward curls, his chin clean sha-
ven, the general expression of his countenance
equivocal � furtively uneasy and suggestive of
his nature as it were � Rawlings, could he
be quiet, might be mistaken for a respectable
man, being in truth the biggest humbug and
social imposter I have ever encountered.  Indeed
the whole family were evidently of the same kid-
ney,  �Gus�s� marriage 
having, afforded a home to 
all of them.   A human cuckoo himself � not
to say a bird of prey � he has brought all his
brood to occupy the remarkably snug nest in
which the pretty sparrow who accepted him,