Page:Dickens - Our Mutual Friend, ed. Lang, 1897, vol.1.djvu/69

 Parliament aloud. "Tell your father whether it was last Monday, Bella."

"But we never heard any more of it, ma," said Bella, the elder girl.

"In addition to which, my dear," her husband urged, "if you have no place to put two young persons into"

"Pardon me," Mrs. Wilfer again interposed; "they were not young persons. Two young ladies of the highest respectability. Tell your father, Bella, whether the milkman said so."

"My dear, it is the same thing."

"No it is not," said Mrs. Wilfer, with the same impressive monotony. "Pardon me!"

"I mean, my dear, it is the same thing as to space. As to space. If you have no space in which to put two youthful fellow-creatures, however eminently respectable, which I do not doubt, where are those youthful fellow-creatures to be accommodated? I carry it no further than that. And solely looking at it," said her husband, making the stipulation at once in a conciliatory, complimentary, and argumentative tone-"as I am sure you will agree, my love - from a fellow-creature point of view, my dear."

"I have nothing more to say," returned Mrs. Wilfer, with a meek renunciatory action of her gloves. "It is as you think, R. W.; not as I do."

Here, the huffing of Miss Bella and the loss of three of her men at a swoop, aggravated by the coronation of an opponent, led to that young lady's jerking the draught-board and pieces off the table: which her sister went down on her knees to pick up.

"Poor Bella!" said Mrs. Wilfer.

"And poor Lavinia, perhaps, my dear?" suggested R. W.

"Pardon me," said Mrs. Wilfer, "no !"

It was one of the worthy woman's specialities that she had an amazing power of gratifying her splenetic or worldly-minded humours by extolling her own family: which she thus proceeded, in the present case, to do.