The snowy fisse crape cap, made after the strait Quaker pattern,--the plain white muslin handkerchief, lying in placid folds across her bosom,--the
drab shawl and dress,--showed at once the community to which she belonged.
Rising from a little cabin-boy in short clothes of the drabbest
drab, to a harpooneer in a broad shad-bellied waistcoat; from that becoming boat-header, chief-mate, and captain, and finally a ship-owner; Bildad, as I hinted before, had concluded his adventurous career by wholly retiring from active life at the goodly age of sixty, and dedicating his remaining days to the quiet receiving of his well-earned income.
Some women, I grant, would not appear to advantage seated on a pillion, and attired in a
drab joseph and a
drab beaver-bonnet, with a crown resembling a small stew-pan; for a garment suggesting a coachman's greatcoat, cut out under an exiguity of cloth that would only allow of miniature capes, is not well adapted to conceal deficiencies of contour, nor is
drab a colour that will throw sallow cheeks into lively contrast.
Two footmen were standing ready, dressed in
drab livery, with scarlet breeches and white stockings.
I first beheld him on the quay, a complete stranger to me, obviously not a Hollander, in a black bowler and a short
drab overcoat, ridiculously out of tone with the winter aspect of the waste-lands, bordered by the brown fronts of houses with their roofs dripping with melting snow.
My 'Conquest of Granada' was in two octavo volumes, bound in
drab boards, and printed on paper very much yellowed with time at its irregular edges.
The driver was a young man of three-or four-and-twenty, with a cigar between his teeth; wearing a dandy cap,
drab jacket, breeches of the same hue, white neckcloth, stick-up collar, and brown driving-gloves--in short, he was the handsome, horsey young buck who had visited Joan a week or two before to get her answer about Tess.
He was a short, bald old man, in a high-shouldered black coat and waistcoat,
drab breeches, and long
drab gaiters.
You do look so pretty in pink and red, Rebecca, and so homely in
drab and brown!"
I could see that our windows looked out upon a
drab space of wall, and that the street below was littered with filth.
Before emerging from it, the rattling of wheels approached behind us, and a stage-coach rumbled out of the mountain, with seats on top and trunks behind, and a smart driver, in a
drab greatcoat, touching the wheel horses with the whipstock and reining in the leaders.
He would lie in bed at night and think of the joy of never seeing again that dingy office or any of the men in it, and of getting away from those
drab lodgings.