[Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens]@TWC D-Link book
Our Mutual Friend

CHAPTER 9
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Somehow, it would make me easier, I fancy.

Say it's only a whim--' 'But I don't say so,' interposed her husband.
'No, but deary, if you did--' 'I should be a Beast if I did,' her husband interposed again.
'That's as much as to say you agree?
Good and kind of you, and like you, deary! And don't you begin to find it pleasant now,' said Mrs Boffin, once more radiant in her comely way from head to foot, and once more smoothing her dress with immense enjoyment, 'don't you begin to find it pleasant already, to think that a child will be made brighter, and better, and happier, because of that poor sad child that day?
And isn't it pleasant to know that the good will be done with the poor sad child's own money ?' 'Yes; and it's pleasant to know that you are Mrs Boffin,' said her husband, 'and it's been a pleasant thing to know this many and many a year!' It was ruin to Mrs Boffin's aspirations, but, having so spoken, they sat side by side, a hopelessly Unfashionable pair.
These two ignorant and unpolished people had guided themselves so far on in their journey of life, by a religious sense of duty and desire to do right.

Ten thousand weaknesses and absurdities might have been detected in the breasts of both; ten thousand vanities additional, possibly, in the breast of the woman.

But the hard wrathful and sordid nature that had wrung as much work out of them as could be got in their best days, for as little money as could be paid to hurry on their worst, had never been so warped but that it knew their moral straightness and respected it.

In its own despite, in a constant conflict with itself and them, it had done so.


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