Though she called me “boy” so often, and with a carelessness that was far from complimentary, she was of about my own age. She seemed much older than I, of course, being a girl, and beautiful and self-possessed; and she was as scornful of me as if she had been one-and-twenty, and a queen.
– Charles Dickens
Great Expectations, Chapter 8. Pip describes his first meeting with Estella, the girl who will become the great but unattainable love of his life. In this passage he describes his first impressions of her, after she tells him “don’t loiter, boy.” It is not only her physical beauty that attracts him, but the cold, fiery and disdainful side of her character. A simile compares the young girl’s scornful manner to that of 21-year-old and a queen. Her arrogance comes strongly across in the superior tone she uses in addressing Pip.