She recognised the others the less because she had at last so unreservedly, so irredeemably, recognised Mr.
Mudge.

However that might be, she was a little ashamed of having to admit to herself that Mr.Mudge's removal to a higher sphere--to a more commanding position, that is, though to a much lower neighbourhood--would have been described still better as a luxury than as the mere simplification, the corrected awkwardness, that she contented herself with calling it.

He had at any rate ceased to be all day long in her eyes, and this left something a little fresh for them to rest on of a Sunday.

During the three months of his happy survival at Cocker's after her consent to their engagement she had often asked herself what it was marriage would be able to add to a familiarity that seemed already to have scraped the platter so clean.

Opposite there, behind the counter of which his superior stature, his whiter apron, his more clustering curls and more present, too present, _h_'s had been for a couple of years the principal ornament, he had moved to and fro before her as on the small sanded floor of their contracted future.