Page:Bleak House.djvu/233

 “Does Mr. Badger think so too?” asked Ada, timidly.

“Why,” said Mr. Badger, “to tell the truth. Miss Clare, this view of the matter had not occurred to me until Mrs. Badger mentioned it. But, when Mrs. Badger put it in that light, I naturally gave great consideration to it; knowing that Mrs. Badger's mind, in addition to its natural advantages, has had the rare advantage of being formed by two such very distinguished (I will even say illustrious) public men as Captain Swosser of the Royal Navy and Professor Dingo. The conclusion at which I have arrived is—in short, is Mrs. Badger's conclusion.”

“It was a maxim of Captain Swosser's,” said. Mrs. Badger, “speaking in his figurative naval manner, that when you make pitch hot, you cannot make it too hot; and that if you only have to swab a plank, you should swab it as if Davy Jones were after you. It appears to me that this maxim is applicable to the medical, as well as to the nautical profession.”

“To all professions,” observed Mr. Badger. “It was admirably said by Captain Swosser. Beautifully said.”

“People objected to Professor Dingo, when we were staying in the North of Devon, after our marriage,” said Mrs. Badger, “that he disfigured some of the houses and other buildings, by chipping off fragments of those edifices with his little geological hammer. But the Professor replied, that he knew of no building, save the Temple of Science. The principle is the same, I think?”

“Precisely the same,” said Mr. Badger. “Finely expressed! The Professor made the same remark, Miss Summerson, in his last illness; when (his mind wandering) he insisted on keeping his little hammer under the pillow, and chipping at the countenances of the attendants. The ruling passion!”

Although we could have dispensed with the length at which Mr. and Mrs. Badger pursued the conversation, we both felt that it was disinterested in them to express the opinion they had communicated to us, and that there was a great probability of its being sound. We agreed to say nothing to Mr. Jamdyce until we had spoken to Richard; and, as he was coming next evening, we resolved to have a very serious talk with him.

So, after he had been a little while width Ada, I went in and found my darling (as I knew she would be) prepared to consider him thoroughly right in whatever he said.

“And how do you get on, Richard?” said I. I always sat down on the other side of him. He made quite a sister of me.

“O! well enough!” said Richard.

“He can't say better than that, Esther, can he?” cried my pet, triumphantly.

I tried to look at my pet in the wisest manner, but of course I couldn't.

“Well enough?” I repeated.

“Yes,” said Richard, “well enough. It's rather jog-trotty and hum-drum. But it'll do as well as any thing else!”

“O! my dear Richard!” I remonstrated.

“What's the matter?” said Richard.

“Do as well as anything else!”

“I don't think there's any harm in that, Dame Durden,” said Ada,