1847. Chronicles of Pineville, 64. One of the women, not the one
who held the lines.
18[?]. Fast Life; an Autobiography, p. 170. Those good-natured
ladies who never had their lines.
1862. Thackeray, Phillip, xii. ‘How should a child like you know
that the marriage was irregular?’ ‘Because I had no lines,’ cries
Caroline.