Then we are told how she knits purses for him, "as she sits alone in the schoolroom,--high up in that lone house, when the little ones are long since asleep,--before her dismal little tea-tray, and her little desk containing her mother's letters and her mementoes of home." Miss Quigley is an ass; but we are made to sympathise entirely with the ass, because of that morsel of pathos as to her mother's letters.
Clive Newcome, our hero, who is a second Pen, but a better fellow, is himself a satire on young men,--on young men who are idle and ambitious at the same time.

He is a painter; but, instead of being proud of his art, is half ashamed of it,--because not being industrious he has not, while yet young, learned to excel.

He is "doing" a portrait of Mrs.
Pendennis, Laura, and thus speaks of his business.

"No.

666,"-- he is supposed to be quoting from the catalogue of the Royal Academy for the year,--"No.