‘Your real darling sister, I have not seen her more than once since her marriage,’ said Mrs Todgers, ‘and then I thought her looking poorly. My sweet Miss Pecksniff, I always thought that you was to be the lady?’
‘Oh dear no!’ cried Cherry, shaking her head. ‘Oh no, Mrs Todgers. Thank you. No! not for any consideration he could offer.’
‘I dare say you are right,’ said Mrs Todgers with a sigh. ‘I feared it all along. But the misery we have had from that match, here among ourselves, in this house, my dear Miss Pecksniff, nobody would believe.’
‘Lor, Mrs Todgers!’
‘Awful, awful!’ repeated Mrs Todgers, with strong emphasis. ‘You recollect our youngest gentleman, my dear?’
‘Of course I do,’ said Cherry.
‘You might have observed,’ said Mrs Todgers, ‘how he used to watch your sister; and that a kind of stony dumbness came over him whenever she was in company?’
‘I am sure I never saw anything of the sort,’ said Cherry, in a peevish manner. ‘What nonsense, Mrs Todgers!’
‘My dear,’ returned that lady in a hollow voice, ‘I have seen him again and again, sitting over his pie at dinner, with his spoon a perfect fixture in his mouth, looking at your sister. I have seen him standing in a corner of our drawing-room, gazing at her, in such a lonely, melancholy state, that he was more like a Pump than a man, and might have drawed tears.’
‘I never saw it!’ cried Cherry; ‘that’s all I can say.’