‘Why, you don’t mean to say, Miss Bella,’ the Golden Dustman slowly remonstrated, ‘that you set up Rokesmith against me?’
‘I do!’ said Bella. ‘He is worth a Million of you.’
Very pretty she looked, though very angry, as she made herself as tall as she possibly could (which was not extremely tall), and utterly renounced her patron with a lofty toss of her rich brown head.
‘I would rather he thought well of me,’ said Bella, ‘though he swept the street for bread, than that you did, though you splashed the mud upon him from the wheels of a chariot of pure gold.—There!’
‘Well I’m sure!’ cried Mr Boffin, staring.
‘And for a long time past, when you have thought you set yourself above him, I have only seen you under his feet,’ said Bella—‘There! And throughout I saw in him the master, and I saw in you the man—There! And when you used him shamefully, I took his part and loved him—There! I boast of it!’
After which strong avowal Bella underwent reaction, and cried to any extent, with her face on the back of her chair.
‘Now, look here,’ said Mr Boffin, as soon as he could find an opening for breaking the silence and striking in. ‘Give me your attention, Bella. I am not angry.’
‘I am!’ said Bella.
‘I say,’ resumed the Golden Dustman, ‘I am not angry, and I mean kindly to you, and I want to overlook this. So you’ll stay where you are, and we’ll agree to say no more about it.’