Grewgious again.
'You must take some wine, sir,' said Mrs. Tope, 'and the jelly that
I had ready for you, and that you wouldn't put your lips to at
noon, though I warned you what would come of it, you know, and you
not breakfasted; and you must have a wing of the roast fowl that
has been put back twenty times if it's been put back once. It
shall all be on table in five minutes, and this good gentleman
belike will stop and see you take it.'
This good gentleman replied with a snort, which might mean yes, or
no, or anything or nothing, and which Mrs. Tope would have found
highly mystifying, but that her attention was divided by the
service of the table.
'You will take something with me?' said Jasper, as the cloth was
laid.
'I couldn't get a morsel down my throat, I thank you,' answered Mr.
Grewgious.
Jasper both ate and drank almost voraciously. Combined with the
hurry in his mode of doing it, was an evident indifference to the
taste of what he took, suggesting that he ate and drank to fortify
himself against any other failure of the spirits, far more than to
gratify his palate. Mr. Grewgious in the meantime sat upright,
with no expression in his face, and a hard kind of imperturbably
polite protest all over him: as though he would have said, in
reply to some invitation to discourse; 'I couldn't originate the
faintest approach to an observation on any subject whatever, I
thank you.
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