‘Well, dear Ma,’ said Bella, ‘and how do you do?’
‘I am as well, Bella,’ replied Mrs Wilfer, ‘as can be expected.’
‘Dear me, Ma,’ said Bella; ‘you talk as if one was just born!’
‘That’s exactly what Ma has been doing,’ interposed Lavvy, over the maternal shoulder, ‘ever since we got up this morning. It’s all very well to laugh, Bella, but anything more exasperating it is impossible to conceive.’
Mrs Wilfer, with a look too full of majesty to be accompanied by any words, attended both her daughters to the kitchen, where the sacrifice was to be prepared.
‘Mr Rokesmith,’ said she, resignedly, ‘has been so polite as to place his sitting-room at our disposal to-day. You will therefore, Bella, be entertained in the humble abode of your parents, so far in accordance with your present style of living, that there will be a drawing-room for your reception as well as a dining-room. Your papa invited Mr Rokesmith to partake of our lowly fare. In excusing himself on account of a particular engagement, he offered the use of his apartment.’
Bella happened to know that he had no engagement out of his own room at Mr Boffin’s, but she approved of his staying away. ‘We should only have put one another out of countenance,’ she thought, ‘and we do that quite often enough as it is.’
Yet she had sufficient curiosity about his room, to run up to it with the least possible delay, and make a close inspection of its contents. It was tastefully though economically furnished, and very neatly arranged. There were shelves and stands of books, English, French, and Italian; and in a portfolio on the writing-table there were sheets upon sheets of memoranda and calculations in figures, evidently referring to the Boffin property. On that table also, carefully backed with canvas, varnished, mounted, and rolled like a map, was the placard descriptive of the murdered man who had come from afar to be her husband. She shrank from this ghostly surprise, and felt quite frightened as she rolled and tied it up again. Peeping about here and there, she came upon a print, a graceful head of a pretty woman, elegantly framed, hanging in the corner by the easy chair. ‘Oh, indeed, sir!’ said Bella, after stopping to ruminate before it. ‘Oh, indeed, sir! I fancy I can guess whom you think that’s like. But I’ll tell you what it’s much more like—your impudence!’ Having said which she decamped: not solely because she was offended, but because there was nothing else to look at.
‘Now, Ma,’ said Bella, reappearing in the kitchen with some remains of a blush, ‘you and Lavvy think magnificent me fit for nothing, but I intend to prove the contrary. I mean to be Cook today.’
‘Hold!’ rejoined her majestic mother. ‘I cannot permit it. Cook, in that dress!’