Page:Bleak House.djvu/72

 really should not have thought she liked me much, unless she had told me so.

“Where would you wish to go ?” she asked.

“Anywhere, my dear,” I replied.

“Anywhere′s nowhere,” said Miss Jellyby, stopping perversely.

“Let us go somewhere at any rate,” said I.

She then walked me on very fast.

“I don′t care !” she said. “Now, you are my witness, Miss Summerson, I say I don′t care—but if he was to come to our house, with his great shining lumpy forehead, night after night till he was as old as Methuselah, I wouldn't have anything to say to him. Such as he and Ma make of themselves !”

“My dear !” I remonstrated, in allusion to the epithet, and the vigorous emphasis Miss Jellyby set upon it. “Your duty as a child”

“O ! don′t talk of duty as a child, Miss Summerson ; where's Ma′s duty as a parent ? All made over to the public and Africa, I suppose ! Then let the public and Africa show duty as a child ; it′s much more their affair than mine. You are shocked, I dare say ! Very well, so am I shocked too ; so we are both shocked, and there's an end of it !”

She walked me on faster yet.

“But for all that, I say again, he may come, and come, and come, and I won′t have anything to say to him. I can′t bear him. If there′s any stuff in the world that I hate and detest, it′s the stuff he and Ma talk. I wonder the very paving stones opposite our house can have the patience to stay there, and be a witness of such inconsistencies and contradictions as all that sounding nonsense, and Ma's management !”

I could not but understand her to refer to Mr. Quale, the young gentleman who had appeared after dinner yesterday. I was saved the disagreeable necessity of pursuing the subject, by Richard and Ada coming up at a round pace, laughing, and asking us if we meant to run a race ? Thus interrupted, Miss Jellyby became silent, and walked moodily on at my side; while I admired the long successions and varieties of streets, the quantity of people already going to and fro, the number of vehicles passing and repassing, the busy preparations in the setting forth of shop windows and the sweeping out of shops, and the extraordinary creatures in rags, secretly groping among the swept-out rubbish for pins and other refuse.

“So, cousin,” said the cheerful voice of Richard to Ada, behind me. “We are never to get out of Chancery ! We have come by another way to our place of meeting yesterday, and—by the Great Seal, here's the old lady again !”

Truly, there she was, immediately in front of us, curtseying and smiling, and saying, with her yesterday′s air of patronage :

“The wards in Jarndyce ! Ve-ry happy, I am sure !”

“You are out early, ma′am,” said I, as she curtsied to me.

“Ye-es ! I usually walk here early. Before the Court sits. It′s retired. I collect my thoughts here for the business of the day,” said the old lady, mincingly. “The business of the day requires a great deal of thought. Chancery justice is so ve-ry difficult to follow.”

“Who's this. Miss Summerson?” whispered Miss Jellyby, drawing my arm tighter through her own.