Chapter 33 - Page 2

touching signal
that she suffered much inwardly for the show of composure with
which she bore her misfortune.

Among the friends of Mrs Gowan (who piqued herself at once on being
Society, and on maintaining intimate and easy relations with that
Power), Mrs Merdle occupied a front row. True, the Hampton Court
Bohemians, without exception, turned up their noses at Merdle as an
upstart; but they turned them down again, by falling flat on their
faces to worship his wealth. In which compensating adjustment of
their noses, they were pretty much like Treasury, Bar, and Bishop,
and all the rest of them.

To Mrs Merdle, Mrs Gowan repaired on a visit of self-condolence,
after having given the gracious consent aforesaid. She drove into
town for the purpose in a one-horse carriage irreverently called at
that period of English history, a pill-box. It belonged to a job-
master in a small way, who drove it himself, and who jobbed it by
the day, or hour, to most of the old ladies in Hampton Court
Palace; but it was a point of ceremony, in that encampment, that
the whole equipage should be tacitly regarded as the private
property of the jobber for the time being, and that the job-master
should betray personal knowledge of nobody but the jobber in
possession. So the Circumlocution Barnacles, who were the largest
job-masters in the universe, always pretended to know of no other
job but the job immediately in hand.

Mrs Merdle was at home, and was in her nest of crimson and gold,
with the parrot on a neighbouring stem watching her with his head
on one side, as if he took her for another splendid parrot of a
larger species. To whom entered Mrs Gowan, with her favourite
green fan, which softened the light on the spots of bloom.

'My dear soul,' said Mrs Gowan, tapping the back of her friend's
hand with this fan after a little indifferent conversation, 'you
are my only comfort. That affair of Henry's that I told you of, is
to take place. Now, how does it strike you? I am dying to know,
because you represent and express Society so well.'

Mrs Merdle reviewed the bosom which Society was accustomed to
review; and having ascertained that show-window of Mr Merdle's and
the London jewellers' to be in good order, replied:

'As to marriage on the part of a man, my dear, Society requires
that he should retrieve his fortunes by marriage. Society requires
that he should gain by marriage. Society requires that he should
found a handsome establishment by marriage. Society does not see,
otherwise, what he has to do with marriage. Bird, be quiet!'

For the parrot on his cage above them, presiding over the
conference as if he were a judge (and indeed he looked rather like
one), had wound up the