‘Will you please tell me,’ said Rosa, taking the paper with a prettily knitted brow, but not opening it: ‘whether I am right in what I am going to say? I can understand what you tell me, so very much better than what I read in law-writings. My poor papa and Eddy’s father made their agreement together, as very dear and firm and fast friends, in order that we, too, might be very dear and firm and fast friends after them?’

‘Just so.’

‘For the lasting good of both of us, and the lasting happiness of both of us?’

‘Just so.’

‘That we might be to one another even much more than they had been to one another?’

‘Just so.’

‘It was not bound upon Eddy, and it was not bound upon me, by any forfeit, in case—’

‘Don’t be agitated, my dear. In the case that it brings tears into your affectionate eyes even to picture to yourself—in the case of your not marrying one another—no, no forfeiture on either side. You would then have been my ward until you were of age. No worse would have befallen you. Bad enough perhaps!’

‘And Eddy?’

‘He would have come into his partnership derived from his father, and into its arrears to his credit (if any), on attaining his majority, just as now.’

Rosa, with her perplexed face and knitted brow, bit the corner of her attested copy, as she sat with her head on one side, looking abstractedly on the floor, and smoothing it with her foot.

‘In short,’ said Mr. Grewgious, ‘this betrothal is a wish, a sentiment, a friendly project, tenderly expressed on both sides. That it was strongly felt, and that there was a lively hope that it would prosper, there can be no doubt. When you were both children, you began to be accustomed to it, and it has prospered. But circumstances alter cases; and I made this visit to-day, partly, indeed principally, to discharge myself of the duty of telling you, my dear, that two young people can only be betrothed in marriage (except as a matter of convenience, and therefore mockery and misery) of their own free will, their own attachment, and their own assurance (it may or it may not prove a mistaken one, but we must take our chance of that), that they are suited to each other, and will make each other happy. Is it to be supposed, for example, that if either of your fathers were living now, and had any mistrust on that subject, his mind would not be changed by the change of circumstances involved in the change of your years? Untenable, unreasonable, inconclusive, and preposterous!’

Mr. Grewgious said all this, as if he were reading it aloud; or, still more, as if he were repeating a lesson. So expressionless of any approach to spontaneity were his face and manner.

‘I have now, my dear,’ he added, blurring out ‘Will’ with his pencil, ‘discharged myself of what is doubtless a formal duty in this case, but still a duty in such a case. Memorandum, “Wishes.” My dear, is there any wish of yours that I can further?’