to the
bird. He would at least have screamed.'

'You don't want me to scream, Mrs Merdle, I suppose,' said Mr Merdle,
taking a chair.

'Indeed I don't know,' retorted Mrs Merdle, 'but that you had better do
that, than be so moody and distraught. One would at least know that you
were sensible of what was going on around you.'

'A man might scream, and yet not be that, Mrs Merdle,' said Mr Merdle,
heavily.

'And might be dogged, as you are at present, without screaming,'
returned Mrs Merdle. 'That's very true. If you wish to know the
complaint I make against you, it is, in so many plain words, that you
really ought not to go into Society unless you can accommodate yourself
to Society.'

Mr Merdle, so twisting his hands into what hair he had upon his head
that he seemed to lift himself up by it as he started out of his chair,
cried: 'Why, in the name of all the infernal powers, Mrs Merdle, who
does more for Society than I do? Do you see these premises, Mrs Merdle?

Do you see this furniture, Mrs Merdle? Do you look in the glass and see
yourself, Mrs Merdle? Do you know the cost of all this, and who it's
all provided for? And yet will you tell me that I oughtn't to go into
Society? I, who shower money upon it in this way? I, who might always be
said--to--to--to harness myself to a watering-cart full of money, and go
about saturating Society every day of my life.'

'Pray, don't be violent, Mr Merdle,' said Mrs Merdle.

'Violent?' said Mr Merdle. 'You are enough to make me desperate. You
don't know half of what I do to accommodate Society. You don't know
anything of the sacrifices I make for it.'

'I know,' returned Mrs Merdle, 'that you receive the best in the land. I
know that you move in the whole Society of the country. And I believe
I know (indeed, not to make any ridiculous pretence about it, I know I
know) who sustains you in it, Mr Merdle.'

'Mrs Merdle,' retorted that gentleman, wiping his dull red and yellow
face, 'I know that as well as you do. If you were not an ornament to
Society, and if I was not a benefactor to Society, you and I would never
have come together. When I say a benefactor to it, I mean a person who
provides it with all sorts of expensive things to eat and drink and look
at. But, to tell me that I am not fit for it after all I have done
for it--after all I have done for it,' repeated Mr Merdle, with a wild
emphasis that made his wife lift up her eyelids, 'after all--all!--to
tell me I