It's almost as if he's having a go at the polite siennas and decorous burnt umbers of the drawing-room paintings he'd had to sell in the Hague and London.
But Lilia was already calling to Miss Abbott, a tall, grave, rather nice-looking young lady who was conducting her adieus in a more decorous manner on the platform.
Maule's Lane, or Pyncheon Street, as it were now more decorous to call it, was thronged, at the appointed hour, as with a congregation on its way to church.
In the first place, the decorous, kind-hearted, simple, old-fashioned gentleman, had unconsciously called out, by his own refinement and courteousness of manner, all the latent courtesy in the other.
Although the crowd was decorous at the start of the party, after Barb did her funny trick with an olive and the piano bench, it started to get pretty crazy.
The Common Reader Volume 1 26 Essays on Jane Austen, George Eliot, Conrad, Montaigne and Others
There may be no answer to these questions, but at the same time let us never manipulate the evidence so as to produce something fitting, decorous, agreeable to our vanity.
But is it really true, that Jahel agreed so quickly to your propositions, which have not been quite decorous, and which, for certain, you did not make with an easy heart?