pany manner.

'Pardon me,' said Mrs Wilfer, after the first salutations, and as soon
as she had adjusted the handkerchief under her chin, and waved her
gloved hands, 'to what am I indebted for this honour?'

'To make short of it, ma'am,' returned Mr Boffin, 'perhaps you may be
acquainted with the names of me and Mrs Boffin, as having come into a
certain property.'

'I have heard, sir,' returned Mrs Wilfer, with a dignified bend of her
head, 'of such being the case.'

'And I dare say, ma'am,' pursued Mr Boffin, while Mrs Boffin added
confirmatory nods and smiles, 'you are not very much inclined to take
kindly to us?'

'Pardon me,' said Mrs Wilfer. ''Twere unjust to visit upon Mr and Mrs
Boffin, a calamity which was doubtless a dispensation.' These words
were rendered the more effective by a serenely heroic expression of
suffering.

'That's fairly meant, I am sure,' remarked the honest Mr Boffin; 'Mrs
Boffin and me, ma'am, are plain people, and we don't want to pretend
to anything, nor yet to go round and round at anything because there's
always a straight way to everything. Consequently, we make this call
to say, that we shall be glad to have the honour and pleasure of your
daughter's acquaintance, and that we shall be rejoiced if your daughter
will come to consider our house in the light of her home equally with
this. In short, we want to cheer your daughter, and to give her
the opportunity of sharing such pleasures as we are a going to take
ourselves. We want to brisk her up, and brisk her about, and give her a
change.'

'That's it!' said the open-hearted Mrs Boffin. 'Lor! Let's be
comfortable.'

Mrs Wilfer bent her head in a distant manner to her lady visitor, and
with majestic monotony replied to the gentleman:

'Pardon me. I have several daughters. Which of my daughters am I to
understand is thus favoured by the kind intentions of Mr Boffin and his
lady?'

'Don't you see?' the ever-smiling Mrs Boffin put in. 'Naturally, Miss
Bella, you know.'

'Oh-h!' said Mrs Wilfer, with a severely unconvinced look. 'My daughter
Bella is accessible and shall speak for herself.' Then opening the door
a little way, simultaneously with a sound of scuttling outside it,
the good lady made the proclamation, 'Send Miss Bella to me!' which
proclamation, though grandly formal, and one might almost say heraldic,
to hear, was in fact enunciated with her maternal eyes reproachfully
glaring on that young lady in the flesh--and