n
the present patronising occasion was over; and the Meagleses felt the
same for their parts. Then Gowan asserting his rights as a disappointed
man who had his grudge against the family, and who, perhaps, had allowed
his mother to have them there, as much in the hope it might give them
some annoyance as with any other benevolent object, aired his pencil and
his poverty ostentatiously before them, and told them he hoped in time
to settle a crust of bread and cheese on his wife, and that he begged
such of them as (more fortunate than himself) came in for any good
thing, and could buy a picture, to please to remember the poor painter.
Then Lord Decimus, who was a wonder on his own Parliamentary pedestal,
turned out to be the windiest creature here: proposing happiness to the
bride and bridegroom in a series of platitudes that would have made the
hair of any sincere disciple and believer stand on end; and trotting,
with the complacency of an idiotic elephant, among howling labyrinths of
sentences which he seemed to take for high roads, and never so much
as wanted to get out of. Then Mr Tite Barnacle could not but feel that
there was a person in company, who would have disturbed his life-long
sitting to Sir Thomas Lawrence in full official character, if such
disturbance had been possible: while Barnacle junior did, with
indignation, communicate to two vapid gentlemen, his relatives, that
there was a feller here, look here, who had come to our Department
without an appointment and said he wanted to know, you know; and that,
look here, if he was to break out now, as he might you know (for you
never could tell what an ungentlemanly Radical of that sort would be up
to next), and was to say, look here, that he wanted to know this moment,
you know, that would be jolly; wouldn't it?

The pleasantest part of the occasion by far, to Clennam, was the
painfullest. When Mr and Mrs Meagles at last hung about Pet in the room
with the two pictures (where the company were not), before going with
her to the threshold which she could never recross to be the old Pet and
the old delight, nothing could be more natural and simple than the three
were. Gowan himself was touched, and answered Mr Meagles's 'O Gowan,
take care of her, take care of her!' with an earnest 'Don't be so
broken-hearted, sir. By Heaven I will!'

And so, with the last sobs and last loving words, and a last look to
Clennam of confidence in his promise, Pet fell back in the ca