ss of manner quite my
sister's. "Nobody's enemy but his own!"
"It would be much more commendable to be somebody else's enemy," said
the gentleman; "far more natural."
"Cousin Raymond," observed another lady, "we are to love our neighbor."
"Sarah Pocket," returned Cousin Raymond, "if a man is not his own
neighbor, who is?"
Miss Pocket laughed, and Camilla laughed and said (checking a yawn),
"The idea!" But I thought they seemed to think it rather a good
idea too. The other lady, who had not spoken yet, said gravely and
emphatically, "Very true!"
"Poor soul!" Camilla presently went on (I knew they had all been looking
at me in the mean time), "he is so very strange! Would anyone believe
that when Tom's wife died, he actually could not be induced to see the
importance of the children's having the deepest of trimmings to their
mourning? 'Good Lord!' says he, 'Camilla, what can it signify so long
as the poor bereaved little things are in black?' So like Matthew! The
idea!"
"Good points in him, good points in him," said Cousin Raymond; "Heaven
forbid I should deny good points in him; but he never had, and he never
will have, any sense of the proprieties."
"You know I was obliged," said Camilla,--"I was obliged to be firm. I
said, 'It WILL NOT DO, for the credit of the family.' I told him that,
without deep trimmings, the family was disgraced. I cried about it from
breakfast till dinner. I injured my digestion. And at last he flung out
in his violent way, and said, with a D, 'Then do as you like.' Thank
Goodness it will always be a consolation to me to know that I instantly
went out in a pouring rain and bought the things."
"He paid for them, did he not?" asked Estella.
"It's not the question, my dear child, who paid for them," returned
Camilla. "I bought them. And I shall often think of that with peace,
when I wake up in the night."
The ringing of a distant bell, combined with the echoing of some cry or
call along the passage by which I had come, interrupted the conversation
and caused Estella to say to me, "Now, boy!" On my turning round, they
all looked at me with the utmost contempt, and, as I went out, I heard
Sarah Pocket say, "Well I am sure! What next!" and Camilla add, with
indignation, "Was there ever such a fancy! The i-de-a!"
As we were going with our candle along the dark passage, Estella stopped
all of a sudden, and, facing round, said in her taunting manner, with
her face quite close to
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