Crossword-Solution: NINNIES 7 letters, 15 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 7

But Gothard’s speech was evidently so true and yet so false, so perfectly innocent and so artful that the two Parisians again looked at each other as if to echo Peyrade’s former words: “They are not ninnies.” Monsieur d’Hauteserre seemed incapable of a word; the mayor was bewildered; the mother, imbecile from maternal fears, was putting questions to the police agents that were idiotically innocent; the servants had been roused from their sleep.

Men are so much nicer than women.” “Labouring under such a delusion, why do you not marry?” “I sometimes jolly well think I would if I got the chance.” “Has nobody arst you?” “Only ninnies.” “Do people ask Helen?” “Plentifully.” “Tell me about them.” “No.” “Tell me about your ninnies, then.” “They were men who had nothing better to do,” said his sister, feeling that she was entitled to score this point.

Others had loved her in the past, if one apply to their brief desires so grave a word, but the others had been “ninnies”--young men who had nothing to do, old men who could find nobody better.

And when old age does come, it will be no calamity to these, as it is to you, poor battered beau, laughed at by the fair ninnies who erst laughed with you; to you, poor follower of salmon, fox, and pheasant, whose joints are stiffening, whose nerve is gone--whose Golgotha remains; to you, poor faded beauty, who have staked all upon man's appetite, and not accumulated goodness or sense for your second course; to you, poor drawing-room wit, whose sarcasm has turned to venom and is turning to drivel.

And the Continental travelling ninnies leave England for health!--run off and forth from the downs to the steamboat, the railway, the steaming hotel, the tourist's shivering mountain-top, in search of sensations! There on the downs the finest and liveliest are at their bidding ready to fly through them like hosts of angels.