‘To a wish to improve your acquaintance,’ Mr Fledgeby replied.
Miss Wren, stopping to bite her thread, looked at him very knowingly.
‘We never meet now,’ said Fledgeby; ‘do we?’
‘No,’ said Miss Wren, chopping off the word.
‘So I had a mind,’ pursued Fledgeby, ‘to come and have a talk with you about our dodging friend, the child of Israel.’
‘So he gave you my address; did he?’ asked Miss Wren.
‘I got it out of him,’ said Fledgeby, with a stammer.
‘You seem to see a good deal of him,’ remarked Miss Wren, with shrewd distrust. ‘A good deal of him you seem to see, considering.’
‘Yes, I do,’ said Fledgeby. ‘Considering.’
‘Haven’t you,’ inquired the dressmaker, bending over the doll on which her art was being exercised, ‘done interceding with him yet?’