“Oh never quite, my darling! Fie, fie, it would break my heart,” returned her mother, making a faint attempt to pat her with the screen, which Edith made no movement to meet, “—about these old conventionalities of manner that are observed in little things? Why are we not more natural? Dear me! With all those yearnings, and gushings, and impulsive throbbings that we have implanted in our souls, and which are so very charming, why are we not more natural?”
Mr Dombey said it was very true, very true.
“We could be more natural I suppose if we tried?” said Mrs Skewton.
Mr Dombey thought it possible.
“Devil a bit, Ma’am,” said the Major. “We couldn’t afford it. Unless the world was peopled with J.B.“s—tough and blunt old Joes, Ma’am, plain red herrings with hard roes, Sir—we couldn’t afford it. It wouldn’t do.”
“You naughty Infidel,” said Mrs Skewton, “be mute.”
“Cleopatra commands,” returned the Major, kissing his hand, “and Antony Bagstock obeys.”
“The man has no sensitiveness,” said Mrs Skewton, cruelly holding up the hand-screen so as to shut the Major out. “No sympathy. And what do we live for but sympathy! What else is so extremely charming! Without that gleam of sunshine on our cold cold earth,” said Mrs Skewton, arranging her lace tucker, and complacently observing the effect of her bare lean arm, looking upward from the wrist, “how could we possibly bear it? In short, obdurate man!” glancing at the Major, round the screen, “I would have my world all heart; and Faith is so excessively charming, that I won’t allow you to disturb it, do you hear?”
The Major replied that it was hard in Cleopatra to require the world to be all heart, and yet to appropriate to herself the hearts of all the world; which obliged Cleopatra to remind him that flattery was insupportable to her, and that if he had the boldness to address her in that strain any more, she would positively send him home.
Withers the Wan, at this period, handing round the tea, Mr Dombey again addressed himself to Edith.