have no right to mix with it after all, is a pretty reward.'

'I say,' answered Mrs Merdle composedly, 'that you ought to make
yourself fit for it by being more degage, and less preoccupied. There is
a positive vulgarity in carrying your business affairs about with you as
you do.' 'How do I carry them about, Mrs Merdle?' asked Mr Merdle.

'How do you carry them about?' said Mrs Merdle. 'Look at yourself in the
glass.'

Mr Merdle involuntarily turned his eyes in the direction of the nearest
mirror, and asked, with a slow determination of his turbid blood to his
temples, whether a man was to be called to account for his digestion?

'You have a physician,' said Mrs Merdle.

'He does me no good,' said Mr Merdle.

Mrs Merdle changed her ground.

'Besides,' said she, 'your digestion is nonsense. I don't speak of your
digestion. I speak of your manner.' 'Mrs Merdle,' returned her husband,
'I look to you for that. You supply manner, and I supply money.'

'I don't expect you,' said Mrs Merdle, reposing easily among her
cushions, 'to captivate people. I don't want you to take any trouble
upon yourself, or to try to be fascinating. I simply request you to care
about nothing--or seem to care about nothing--as everybody else does.'

'Do I ever say I care about anything?' asked Mr Merdle.

'Say? No! Nobody would attend to you if you did. But you show it.'

'Show what? What do I show?' demanded Mr Merdle hurriedly.

'I have already told you. You show that you carry your business cares
an projects about, instead of leaving them in the City, or wherever else
they belong to,' said Mrs Merdle. 'Or seeming to. Seeming would be quite
enough: I ask no more. Whereas you couldn't be more occupied with your
day's calculations and combinations than you habitually show yourself to
be, if you were a carpenter.'

'A carpenter!' repeated Mr Merdle, checking something like a groan.

'I shouldn't so much mind being a carpenter, Mrs Merdle.'

'And my complaint is,' pursued the lady, disregarding the low remark,
'that it is not the tone of Society, and that you ought to correct
it, Mr Merdle. If you have any doubt of my judgment, ask even Edmund
Sparkler.' The door of the room had opened, and Mrs Merdle now surveyed
the head of her son through her glass. 'Edmund; we want you here.'

Mr Sparkler, who had merely put in his head and looked round the room
without entering (as if he were searching the house for that young lady
with no nonse