But I don't think he ever learned the "capital towns of Europe," though we studied them together under the same oak tree.
We had a happy two years of it together under the Bundle dynasty, and then trouble came.
I was never fond of demonstrative affection from strangers.

The ladies who lavish kisses and flattery upon one's youthful head after eating papa's good dinner--keeping a sharp protective eye on their own silk dresses, and perchance pricking one with a brooch or pushing a curl into one eye with a kid-gloved finger--I held in unfeigned abhorrence.
But over and above my natural instinct against the unloving fondling of drawing-room visitors, I had a special and peculiar antipathy to Miss Eliza Burton.
At first, I think I rather admired her.

Her rolling eyes, the black hair plastered low upon her forehead,--the colour high, but never changeable or delicate--the amplitude and rustle of her skirts, the impressiveness of her manner, her very positive matureness, were just what the crude taste of childhood is apt to be fascinated by.

She was the sister of my father's man of business; and she and her brother were visiting at my home.

She really looked well in the morning, "toned down" by a fresh, summer muslin, and all womanly anxiety to relieve my father of the trouble of making the tea for breakfast.
"Dear Mr.Dacre, _do_ let me relieve you of that task," she cried, her ribbons fluttering over the sugar-basin.