And she'll go down twice and three times a night in the cold, poor dear, to see if he's fallen asleep; and gets abused like a pickpocket for her pains (which was an exaggeration); and lies in bed all the morning, looking at the flies, and calls after her if his shoes want tying, or his finger aches; as helpless as the babe unborn; and will never do nothing useful himself, not even to hang a picture or move a chair, and grumbles at her if he sees her doing anything, because she ain't listening to his prosodies, and snaps, and worrits, and won't speak to her sometimes for a whole morning, the brute." "But is he not fond of his children ?" "Fond?
Yes, his way, and small thanks to him, the little angels! To play with 'em when they're good, and tell them cock-and-a-bull fairy tales--wonder why he likes to put such stuff into their heads--and then send 'em out of the room if they make a noise, because it splits his poor head, and his nerves are so delicate.

Wish he had hers, or mine either, Doctor Thurnall; then he'd know what nerves was, in a frail woman, which he uses us both as his negro slaves, or would if I didn't stand up to him pretty sharp now and then, and give him a piece of my mind, which I will do, like the faithful servant in the parable, if he kills me for it, Doctor Thurnall!" "Does he drink ?" asked Tom, bluntly.
"He!" she answered, in a tone which seemed to imply that even one masculine vice would have raised him in her eyes.

"He's not man enough, I think; and lives on his slops, and his coffee, and his tapioca; and how's he ever to have any appetite, always a sitting about, heaped up together over his books, with his ribs growing into his backbone ?--If he'd only go and take his walk, or get a spade and dig in the garden, or anything but them everlasting papers, which I hates the sight of;" and so forth.
From all which Tom gathered a tolerably clear notion of the poor poet's state of body and mind; as a self-indulgent, unmethodical person, whose ill-temper was owing partly to perpetual brooding over his own thoughts, and partly to dyspepsia, brought on by his own effeminacy--in both cases, not a thing to be pitied or excused by the hearty and valiant Doctor.

And Tom's original contempt for Vavasour took a darker form, perhaps one too dark to be altogether just.
"I'll tackle him, Miss Clara." "I wish you would: I'm sure he wants some one to look after him just now.

He's half wild about some review that somebody's been and done of him in The Times, and has been flinging the paper about the room, and calling all mankind vipers and adders, and hooting herds--it's as bad as swearing, I say--and running to my mistress, to make her read it, and see how the whole world's against him, and then forbidding her to defile her eyes with a word of it; and so on, till she's been crying all the morning, poor dear!" "Why not laughing at him ?" "Poor thing; that's where it all is: she's just as anxious about his poetry as he is, and would write it just as well as he, I'll warrant, if she hadn't better things to do; and all her fuss is, that people should 'appreciate' him.