Hearing the Last of It

MRS SPARSIT, lying by to recover the tone of her nerves in Mr Bounderby’s retreat, kept such a sharp look-out, night and day, under her Coriolanian eyebrows, that her eyes, like a couple of lighthouses on an iron-bound coast, might have warned all prudent mariners from that bold rock her Roman nose and the dark and craggy region in its neighbourhood, but for the placidity of her manner. Although it was hard to believe that her retiring for the night could be anything but a form, so severely wide awake were those classical eyes of hers, and so impossible did it seem that her rigid nose could yield to any relaxing influence, yet her manner of sitting, smoothing her uncomfortable, not to say, gritty mittens (they were constructed of a cool fabric like a meat-safe), or of ambling to unknown places of destination with her foot in her cotton stirrup, was so perfectly serene, that most observers would have been constrained to suppose her a dove, embodied by some freak of nature, in the earthly tabernacle of a bird of the hook- beaked order.

She was a most wonderful woman for prowling about the house. How she got from story to story was a mystery beyond solution. A lady so decorous in herself, and so highly connected, was not to be suspected of dropping over the banisters or sliding down them, yet her extraordinary facility of locomotion suggested the wild idea. Another noticeable circumstance in Mrs Sparsit was that she was never hurried. She would shoot with consummate velocity from the roof to the hall, yet would be in full possession of her breath and dignity on the moment of her arrival there. Neither was she ever seen by human vision to go at a great pace.

She took very kindly to Mr Harthouse, and had some pleasant conversation with him soon after her arrival. She made him her stately curtsey in the garden, one morning before breakfast.

‘It appears but yesterday, sir,’ said Mrs Sparsit, ‘that I had the honour of receiving you at the Bank, when you were so good as to wish to be made acquainted with Mr Bounderby’s address.’

‘An occasion, I am sure, not to be forgotten by myself in the course of Ages,’ said Mr Harthouse, inclining his head to Mrs Sparsit with the most indolent of all possible airs.

‘We live in a singular world, sir,’ said Mrs Sparsit.

‘I have had the honour, by a coincidence of which I am proud, to have made a remark, similar in effect, though not so epigrammatically expressed.’

‘A singular world, I would say, sir,’ pursued Mrs Sparsit; after acknowledging the compliment with a drooping of her dark eyebrows, not altogether so mild in its expression as her voice was in its dulcet tones; ‘as regards the intimacies we form at one time, with individuals we were quite ignorant of, at another. I recall, sir, that on that occasion you went so far as to say you were actually apprehensive of Miss Gradgrind.’

‘Your memory does me more honour than my insignificance deserves. I availed myself of your obliging hints to correct my timidity, and it is unnecessary to add that they were perfectly accurate. Mrs Sparsit’s talent for — in fact for anything requiring accuracy — with a combination of strength of mind — and Family — is too habitually developed to admit of any question.’ He was almost falling asleep over this compliment; it took him so long to get through, and his mind wandered so much in the course of its execution.

‘You found Miss Gradgrind — I really cannot call her Mrs Bounderby; it’s very absurd of me — as youthful as I described her?’ asked Mrs Sparsit, sweetly.

‘You drew her portrait perfectly,’ said Mr Harthouse. ‘Presented her dead image.’

‘Very engaging, sir,’ said Mrs Sparsit, causing her mittens slowly to revolve over one another.

‘Highly so.’


  By PanEris using Melati.

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