'I have not,' returned Mrs Wilfer, waving her gloves in her chronic state of dignity, and vague ill-usage, 'the honour of any intimate acquaintance with Mr Boffin, and it is not for me to congratulate that gentleman on the acquisition he has made.'
'A poor one enough,' said Rokesmith.
'Pardon me,' returned Mrs Wilfer, 'the merits of Mr Boffin may be highly distinguished--may be more distinguished than the countenance of Mrs Boffin would imply--but it were the insanity of humility to deem him worthy of a better assistant.'
'You are very good. I have also been telling Miss Wilfer that she is expected very shortly at the new residence in town.'
'Having tacitly consented,' said Mrs Wilfer, with a grand shrug of her shoulders, and another wave of her gloves, 'to my child's acceptance of the proffered attentions of Mrs Boffin, I interpose no objection.'
Here Miss Bella offered the remonstrance: 'Don't talk nonsense, ma, please.'
'Peace!' said Mrs Wilfer.
'No, ma, I am not going to be made so absurd. Interposing objections!'
'I say,' repeated Mrs Wilfer, with a vast access of grandeur, 'that Iam NOT going to interpose objections. If Mrs Boffin (to whose countenance no disciple of Lavater could possibly for a single moment subscribe),' with a shiver, 'seeks to illuminate her new residence in town with the attractions of a child of mine, I am content that she should be favoured by the company of a child of mine.'
'You use the word, ma'am, I have myself used,' said Rokesmith, with a glance at Bella, 'when you speak of Miss Wilfer's attractions there.'
'Pardon me,' returned Mrs Wilfer, with dreadful solemnity, 'but Ihad not finished.'
'Pray excuse me.'
'I was about to say,' pursued Mrs Wilfer, who clearly had not had the faintest idea of saying anything more: 'that when I use the term attractions, I do so with the qualification that I do not mean it in any way whatever.'
The excellent lady delivered this luminous elucidation of her views with an air of greatly obliging her hearers, and greatly distinguishing herself. Whereat Miss Bella laughed a scornful little laugh and said:
'Quite enough about this, I am sure, on all sides. Have the goodness, Mr Rokesmith, to give my love to Mrs Boffin--'
'Pardon me!' cried Mrs Wilfer. 'Compliments.'
'Love!' repeated Bella, with a little stamp of her foot.
'No!' said Mrs Wilfer, monotonously. 'Compliments.'
('Say Miss Wilfer's love, and Mrs Wilfer's compliments,' the Secretary proposed, as a compromise.)'And I shall be very glad to come when she is ready for me. The sooner, the better.'
'One last word, Bella,' said Mrs Wilfer, 'before descending to the family apartment. I trust that as a child of mine you will ever be sensible that it will be graceful in you, when associating with Mr and Mrs Boffin upon equal terms, to remember that the Secretary, Mr Rokesmith, as your father's lodger, has a claim on your good word.'
The condescension with which Mrs Wilfer delivered this proclamation of patronage, was as wonderful as the swiftness with which the lodger had lost caste in the Secretary. He smiled as the mother retired down stairs; but his face fell, as the daughter followed.
'So insolent, so trivial, so capricious, so mercenary, so careless, so hard to touch, so hard to turn!' he said, bitterly.
And added as he went upstairs. 'And yet so pretty, so pretty!'
And added presently, as he walked to and fro in his room. 'And if she knew!'
She knew that he was shaking the house by his walking to and fro;and she declared it another of the miseries of being poor, that you couldn't get rid of a haunting Secretary, stump--stump--stumping overhead in the dark, like a Ghost.
