With too great length of throat at his upper end, and too much ankle-bone and heel at his lower; with an awkward and hesitating manner; with a shambling walk; and with what is called a near sight—which perhaps prevented his observing how much white cotton stocking he displayed to the public eye, in contrast with his black suit—Mr. Grewgious still had some strange capacity in him of making on the whole an agreeable impression.

Mr. Grewgious was discovered by his ward, much discomfited by being in Miss Twinkleton’s company in Miss Twinkleton’s own sacred room. Dim forebodings of being examined in something, and not coming well out of it, seemed to oppress the poor gentleman when found in these circumstances.

‘My dear, how do you do? I am glad to see you. My dear, how much improved you are. Permit me to hand you a chair, my dear.’

Miss Twinkleton rose at her little writing-table, saying, with general sweetness, as to the polite Universe: ‘Will you permit me to retire?’

‘By no means, madam, on my account. I beg that you will not move.’

‘I must entreat permission to move,’ returned Miss Twinkleton, repeating the word with a charming grace; ‘but I will not withdraw, since you are so obliging. If I wheel my desk to this corner window, shall I be in the way?’

‘Madam! In the way!’

‘You are very kind.—Rosa, my dear, you will be under no restraint, I am sure.’

Here Mr. Grewgious, left by the fire with Rosa, said again: ‘My dear, how do you do? I am glad to see you, my dear.’ And having waited for her to sit down, sat down himself.

‘My visits,’ said Mr. Grewgious, ‘are, like those of the angels—not that I compare myself to an angel.’

‘No, sir,’ said Rosa.

‘Not by any means,’ assented Mr. Grewgious. ‘I merely refer to my visits, which are few and far between. The angels are, we know very well, up-stairs.’

Miss Twinkleton looked round with a kind of stiff stare.

‘I refer, my dear,’ said Mr. Grewgious, laying his hand on Rosa’s, as the possibility thrilled through his frame of his otherwise seeming to take the awful liberty of calling Miss Twinkleton my dear; ‘I refer to the other young ladies.’

Miss Twinkleton resumed her writing.

Mr. Grewgious, with a sense of not having managed his opening point quite as neatly as he might have desired, smoothed his head from back to front as if he had just dived, and were pressing the water out—this smoothing action, however superfluous, was habitual with him—and took a pocket-book from his coat-pocket, and a stump of black-lead pencil from his waistcoat-pocket.

‘I made,’ he said, turning the leaves: ‘I made a guiding memorandum or so—as I usually do, for I have no conversational powers whatever—to which I will, with your permission, my dear, refer. “Well and happy.” Truly. You are well and happy, my dear? You look so.’

‘Yes, indeed, sir,’ answered Rosa.

‘For which,’ said Mr. Grewgious, with a bend of his head towards the corner window, ‘our warmest acknowledgments are due, and I am sure are rendered, to the maternal kindness and the constant care and consideration of the lady whom I have now the honour to see before me.’