The poor old boy, pallid and wan, in stark and merciless juxtaposition to the ruddy picture of health and well-being, Sir James.  ‘Skinned over for the occasion’, beat that.

‘Really, by the side of Sir James, he looks like a death’s head skinned over for the occasion.’

Source: George Eliot, Middlemarch (London: Oxford University Press, 1973), p. 92

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