‘Silence!’ proclaimed Mrs Wilfer. ‘I command silence!’
‘I have not the slightest intention of being silent, Ma,’ returned Lavinia coolly, ‘but quite the contrary. I am not going to be eyed as if I had come from the Boffins, and sit silent under it. I am not going to have George Sampson eyed as if he had come from the Boffins, and sit silent under it. If Pa thinks proper to be eyed as if he had come from the Boffins also, well and good. I don’t choose to. And I won’t!’
Lavinia’s engineering having made this crooked opening at Bella, Mrs Wilfer strode into it.
‘You rebellious spirit! You mutinous child! Tell me this, Lavinia. If in violation of your mother’s sentiments, you had condescended to allow yourself to be patronized by the Boffins, and if you had come from those halls of slavery—’
‘That’s mere nonsense, Ma,’ said Lavinia.
‘How!’ exclaimed Mrs Wilfer, with sublime severity.
‘Halls of slavery, Ma, is mere stuff and nonsense,’ returned the unmoved Irrepressible.
‘I say, presumptuous child, if you had come from the neighbourhood of Portland Place, bending under the yoke of patronage and attended by its domestics in glittering garb to visit me, do you think my deep-seated feelings could have been expressed in looks?’
‘All I think about it, is,’ returned Lavinia, ‘that I should wish them expressed to the right person.’
‘And if,’ pursued her mother, ‘if making light of my warnings that the face of Mrs Boffin alone was a face teeming with evil, you had clung to Mrs Boffin instead of to me, and had after all come home rejected by Mrs Boffin, trampled under foot by Mrs Boffin, and cast out by Mrs Boffin, do you think my feelings could have been expressed in looks?’