' asked Nancy, stopping some turbulent exclamation on the part of Mr. Sikes, expressive of the disgust with which he received Fagin's affectation of humanity.
The Gadfly's behaviour seemed to him an absurd piece of affectation, and he was annoyed that Gemma should have been tactless enough to follow his example.
Yet knowing this to be a fact, we discern in Tolstoy's Childhood the same bantering, affected geniality, transplanted to the soil of a more aristocratic nature.