Peggotty knowing nothing about her, and my mother saying nothing about her, she was quite a mystery in the parlour; and the fact of her having a magazine of jewellers' cotton in her pocket, and sticking the article in her ears in that way, did not detract from the solemnity of her presence.
The doctor having been upstairs and come down again, and having satisfied himself, I suppose, that there was a probability of this unknown lady and himself having to sit there, face to face, for some hours, laid himself out to be polite and social.

He was the meekest of his sex, the mildest of little men.

He sidled in and out of a room, to take up the less space.

He walked as softly as the Ghost in Hamlet, and more slowly.

He carried his head on one side, partly in modest depreciation of himself, partly in modest propitiation of everybody else.