’There, Bella! At last I hope you have
got your wishes realized—by your Boffins.
You’ll be rich enough now—with your
Boffins. You can have as much flirting as you
like—at your Boffins. But you won’t
take me to your Boffins, I can tell you—you
and your Boffins too!’
‘If,’ quoth Mr George Sampson, moodily
pulling his stopper out, ’Miss Bella’s
Mr Boffin comes any more of his nonsense to me,
I only wish him to understand, as betwixt man and
man, that he does it at his per—’
and was going to say peril; but Miss Lavinia, having
no confidence in his mental powers, and feeling his
oration to have no definite application to any circumstances,
jerked his stopper in again, with a sharpness that
made his eyes water.
And now the worthy Mrs Wilfer, having used her youngest
daughter as a lay-figure for the edification of these
Boffins, became bland to her, and proceeded to develop
her last instance of force of character, which was
still in reserve. This was, to illuminate the
family with her remarkable powers as a physiognomist;
powers that terrified R. W. when ever let loose, as
being always fraught with gloom and evil which no
inferior prescience was aware of. And this Mrs
Wilfer now did, be it observed, in jealousy of these
Boffins, in the very same moments when she was already
reflecting how she would flourish these very same
Boffins and the state they kept, over the heads of
her Boffinless friends.
‘Of their manners,’ said Mrs Wilfer, ’I
say nothing. Of their appearance, I say nothing.
Of the disinterestedness of their intentions towards
Bella, I say nothing. But the craft, the secrecy,
the dark deep underhanded plotting, written in Mrs
Boffin’s countenance, make me shudder.’
As an incontrovertible proof that those baleful attributes
were all there, Mrs Wilfer shuddered on the spot.
A MARRIAGE CONTRACT
There is excitement in the Veneering mansion.
The mature young lady is going to be married (powder
and all) to the mature young gentleman, and she is
to be married from the Veneering house, and the Veneerings
are to give the breakfast. The Analytical, who
objects as a matter of principle to everything that
occurs on the premises, necessarily objects to the
match; but his consent has been dispensed with, and
a spring-van is delivering its load of greenhouse
plants at the door, in order that to-morrow’s
feast may be crowned with flowers.
The mature young lady is a lady of property.
The mature young gentleman is a gentleman of property.
He invests his property. He goes, in a condescending
amateurish way, into the City, attends meetings of
Directors, and has to do with traffic in Shares.
As is well known to the wise in their generation,
traffic in Shares is the one thing to have to do with
in this world. Have no antecedents, no established
character, no cultivation, no ideas, no manners; have
