jocularity🔊

[…] Cristal Nixon at that moment rode up to them, and said, with an affectation of jocularity which sat very ill upon his sullen features, […]

All were armed with pistols, and there was a small armoury of rifles against a wall. “Guns,” I said with fearful jocularity, “in a holy place?”

Would not the owl have shrieked and the cricket cried in my very title-page? and could it have been possible for me, with a moderate attention to decorum, to introduce any scene more lively than might be produced by the jocularity of a clownish but faithful valet, or the garrulous narrative of the heroine's fille-de-chambre, when rehearsing the stories of blood and horror which she had heard in the servants' hall?