Works of Charles Dickens - Charles Dickens [5578]
'Ma, pray don't sit staring at me in that intensely aggravating manner! If you see a black on my nose, tell me so; if you don't, leave me alone.'
'Do you address Me in those words?' said Mrs Wilfer. 'Do you presume?'
'Don't talk about presuming, Ma, for goodness' sake. A girl who is old enough to be engaged, is quite old enough to object to be stared at as if she was a Clock.'
'Audacious one!' said Mrs Wilfer. 'Your grandmamma, if so addressed by one of her daughters, at any age, would have insisted on her retiring to a dark apartment.'
'My grandmamma,' returned Lavvy, folding her arms and leaning back in her chair, 'wouldn't have sat staring people out of countenance, I think.'
'She would!' said Mrs Wilfer.
'Then it's a pity she didn't know better,' said Lavvy. 'And if my grandmamma wasn't in her dotage when she took to insisting on people's retiring to dark apartments, she ought to have been. A pretty exhibition my grandmamma must have made of herself! I wonder whether she ever insisted on people's retiring into the ball of St Paul's; and if she did, how she got them there!'
'Silence!' proclaimed Mrs Wilfer. 'I command silence!'
'I have not the slightest intention of being silent, Ma,' returned Lavinia coolly, 'but quite the contrary. I am not going to be eyed as if I had come from the Boffins, and sit silent under it. I am not going to have George Sampson eyed as if HE had come from the Boffins, and sit silent under it. If Pa thinks proper to be eyed as if HE had come from the Boffins also, well and good. I don't choose to. And I won't!'
Lavinia's engineering having made this crooked opening at Bella, Mrs Wilfer strode into it.
'You rebellious spirit! You mutinous child! Tell me this, Lavinia. If in violation of your mother's sentiments, you had condescended to allow yourself to be patronized by the Boffins, and if you had come from those halls of slavery--'
'That's mere nonsense, Ma,' said Lavinia.
'How!' exclaimed Mrs Wilfer, with sublime severity.
'Halls of slavery, Ma, is mere stuff and nonsense,' returned the unmoved Irrepressible.
'I say, presumptuous child, if you had come from the neighbourhood of Portland Place, bending under the yoke of patronage and attended by its domestics in glittering garb to visit me, do you think my deep-seated feelings could have been expressed in looks?'
'All I think about it, is,' returned Lavinia, 'that I should wish them expressed to the right person.'
'And if,' pursued her mother, 'if making light of my warnings that the face of Mrs Boffin alone was a face teeming with evil, you had clung to Mrs Boffin instead of to me, and had after all come home rejected by Mrs Boffin, trampled under foot by Mrs Boffin, and cast out by Mrs Boffin, do you think my feelings could have been expressed in looks?'
Lavinia was about replying to her honoured parent that she might as well have dispensed with her looks altogether then, when Bella rose and said, 'Good night, dear Ma. I have had a tiring day, and I'll go to bed.' This broke up the agreeable party. Mr George Sampson shortly afterwards took his leave, accompanied by Miss Lavinia with a candle as far as the hall, and without a candle as far as the garden gate; Mrs Wilfer, washing her hands of the Boffins, went to bed after the manner of Lady Macbeth; and R. W. was left alone among the dilapidations of the supper table, in a melancholy attitude.
But, a light footstep roused him from his meditations, and it was Bella's. Her pretty hair was hanging all about her, and she had tripped down softly, brush in hand, and barefoot, to say good-night to him.
'My dear, you most unquestionably ARE a lovely woman,' said the cherub, taking up a tress in his hand.
'Look here, sir,' said Bella; 'when your lovely woman marries, you shall have that piece if you like, and she'll make you a chain of it. Would you prize that remembrance of