Mrs. Whiffler will
never cease to recollect the last day of the old year as long as
she lives, for it was on that day that the baby had the four red
spots on its nose which they took for measles: nor Christmas-day,
for twenty-one days after Christmas-day the twins were born; nor
Good Friday, for it was on a Good Friday that she was frightened by
the donkey-cart when she was in the family way with Georgiana. The
movable feasts have no motion for Mr. and Mrs. Whiffler, but remain
pinned down tight and fast to the shoulders of some small child,
from whom they can never be separated any more. Time was made,
according to their creed, not for slaves but for girls and boys;
the restless sands in his glass are but little children at play.
As we have already intimated, the children of this couple can know
no medium. They are either prodigies of good health or prodigies
of bad health; whatever they are, they must be prodigies. Mr.
Whiffler must have to describe at his office such excruciating
agonies constantly undergone by his eldest boy, as nobody else's
eldest boy ever underwent; or he must be able to declare that there
never was a child endowed with such amazing health, such an
indomitable constitution, and such a cast-iron frame, as his child.
His children must be, in some respect or other, above and beyond
the children of all other people.
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