Mrs Pipchin’s hard grey eye looks doubtful as she answers, in three distinct jerks, “Ah! Perhaps. I suppose so.”
“To tell you my mind, Lucretia,” says Mrs Pipchin; she still calls Miss Tox Lucretia, on account of having made her first experiments in the child-quelling line of business on that lady, when an unfortunate and weazen little girl of tender years; “to tell you my mind, Lucretia, I think it’s a good riddance. I don’t want any of your brazen faces here, myself!”
“Brazen indeed! Well may you say brazen, Mrs Pipchin!” returned Miss Tox. “To leave him! Such a noble figure of a man!” And here Miss Tox is overcome.
“I don’t know about noble, I’m sure,” observes Mrs Pipchin; irascibly rubbing her nose. “But I know this—that when people meet with trials, they must bear ’em. Hoity, toity! I have had enough to bear myself, in my time! What a fuss there is! She’s gone, and well got rid of. Nobody wants her back, I should think!”
This hint of the Peruvian Mines, causes Miss Tox to rise to go away; when Mrs Pipchin rings the bell for Towlinson to show her out, Mr Towlinson, not having seen Miss Tox for ages, grins, and hopes she’s well; observing that he didn’t know her at first, in that bonnet.
“Pretty well, Towlinson, I thank you,” says Miss Tox. “I beg you’ll have the goodness, when you happen to see me here, not to mention it. My visits are merely to Mrs Pipchin.”
“Very good, Miss,” says Towlinson.
“Shocking circumstances occur, Towlinson,” says Miss Tox.
“Very much so indeed, Miss,” rejoins Towlinson.
“I hope, Towlinson,” says Miss Tox, who, in her instruction of the Toodle family, has acquired an admonitorial tone, and a habit of improving passing occasions, “that what has happened here, will be a warning to you, Towlinson.”