“No, no,” said Mr. Wickfield. “Why should you be inconvenienced? There’s another room. There’s another room.”
“Oh, but you know,” returned Uriah, with a grin, “I should really be delighted!”
To cut the matter short, I said I would have the other room or none at all; so it was settled that I should have the other room: and, taking my leave of the firm until dinner, I went up stairs again.
I had hoped, to have no other companion than Agnes. But Mrs. Heep had asked permission to bring herself and her knitting near the fire, in that room; on pretence of its having an aspect more favourable for her rheumatics, as the wind then was, than the drawing-room or dining-parlour. Though I could almost have consigned her to the mercies of the wind on the topmost pinnacle of the Cathedral, without remorse, I made a virtue of necessity, and gave her a friendly salutation.
“I’m umbly thankful to you, sir,” said Mrs. Heep, in acknowledgment of my inquiries concerning her health, “but I’m only pretty well. I haven’t much to boast of. If I could see my Uriah well settled in life, I couldn’t expect much more I think. How do you think my Ury looking, sir?”
I thought him looking as villanous as ever, and I replied that I saw no change in him.
“Oh, don’t you think he’s changed?” said Mrs. Heep. “There I must umbly beg leave to differ from you. Don’t you see a thinness in him?”
“Not more than usual,” I replied.
“Don’t you though!” said Mrs. Heep. “But you don’t take notice of him with a mother’s eye!”
His mother’s eye was an evil eye to the rest of the world, I thought as it met mine, howsoever affectionate to him; and I believe she and her son were devoted to one another. It passed me, and went on to Agnes.