“My good lady,” returned my guardian,
“it is hardly reasonable to ask me to get out
of my own room.”
“I don’t care for that,” said Mrs.
Guppy. “Get out with you. If we
ain’t good enough for you, go and procure somebody
that is good enough. Go along and find ’em.”
I was quite unprepared for the rapid manner in which
Mrs. Guppy’s power of jocularity merged into
a power of taking the profoundest offence.
“Go along and find somebody that’s good
enough for you,” repeated Mrs. Guppy.
“Get out!” Nothing seemed to astonish
Mr. Guppy’s mother so much and to make her so
very indignant as our not getting out. “Why
don’t you get out?” said Mrs. Guppy.
“What are you stopping here for?”
“Mother,” interposed her son, always getting
before her and pushing her back with one shoulder
as she sidled at my guardian, “Will you
hold your tongue?”
“No, William,” she returned, “I
won’t! Not unless he gets out, I won’t!”
However, Mr. Guppy and Mr. Jobling together closed
on Mr. Guppy’s mother (who began to be quite
abusive) and took her, very much against her will,
downstairs, her voice rising a stair higher every
time her figure got a stair lower, and insisting that
we should immediately go and find somebody who was
good enough for us, and above all things that we should
get out.
Beginning the World
The term had commenced, and my guardian found an intimation
from Mr. Kenge that the cause would come on in two
days. As I had sufficient hopes of the will
to be in a flutter about it, Allan and I agreed to
go down to the court that morning. Richard was
extremely agitated and was so weak and low, though
his illness was still of the mind, that my dear girl
indeed had sore occasion to be supported. But
she looked forward—a very little way now—to
the help that was to come to her, and never drooped.
It was at Westminster that the cause was to come on.
It had come on there, I dare say, a hundred times
before, but I could not divest myself of an idea that
it might lead to some result now. We left
home directly after breakfast to be at Westminster
Hall in good time and walked down there through the
lively streets—so happily and strangely
it seemed!—together.
As we were going along, planning what we should do
for Richard and Ada, I heard somebody calling “Esther!
My dear Esther! Esther!” And there was
Caddy Jellyby, with her head out of the window of a
little carriage which she hired now to go about in
to her pupils (she had so many), as if she wanted
to embrace me at a hundred yards’ distance.
I had written her a note to tell her of all that
my guardian had done, but had not had a moment to go
and see her. Of course we turned back, and the
affectionate girl was in that state of rapture, and
was so overjoyed to talk about the night when she
brought me the flowers, and was so determined to squeeze
