‘ No, sir,’ said Rosa.
‘ Not by any means,’ assented Mr. Grewgious. ‘I merely refer to my visits, which are few and far between. The angels are, we know very well, up-stairs.’
Miss Twinkleton looked round with a kind of stiff stare.
‘ I refer, my dear,’ said Mr. Grewgious, laying his hand on Rosa’s, as the possibility thrilled through his frame of his otherwise seeming to take the awful liberty of calling Miss Twinkleton my dear; ‘I refer to the other young ladies.’
Miss Twinkleton resumed her writing.
Mr. Grewgious, with a sense of not having managed his opening point quite as neatly as he might have desired, smoothed his head from back to front as if he had just dived, and were pressing the water out—this smoothing action, however superfluous, was habitual with him—and took a p
