" Truly. You are well and happy, my dear?
You look so.'
'Yes, indeed, sir,' answered Rosa.
'For which,' said Mr. Grewgious, with a bend of his head towards
the corner window, 'our warmest acknowledgments are due, and I am
sure are rendered, to the maternal kindness and the constant care
and consideration of the lady whom I have now the honour to see
before me.'
This point, again, made but a lame departure from Mr. Grewgious,
and never got to its destination; for, Miss Twinkleton, feeling
that the courtesies required her to be by this time quite outside
the conversation, was biting the end of her pen, and looking
upward, as waiting for the descent of an idea from any member of
the Celestial Nine who might have one to spare.
Mr. Grewgious smoothed his smooth head again, and then made another
reference to his pocket-book; lining out 'well and happy,' as
disposed of.
'"Pounds, shillings, and pence," is my next note. A dry subject
for a young lady, but an important subject too. Life is pounds,
shillings, and pence. Death is--' A sudden recollection of the
death of her two parents seemed to stop him, and he said in a
softer tone, and evidently inserting the negative as an after-
thought: 'Death is NOT pounds, shillings, and pence.'
His voice was as hard and dry as himself, and Fancy might have
ground it straight, like himself, into high-dried snuff. And yet,
through the very limited means of expression that he possessed, he
seemed to express kindness.
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