I'll stop your husband shorter
than will be pleasant to you. I won't know your story professionally,
for nothing, old lady! Miss Wickfield, if you have any love for your
father, you had better not join that gang. I'll ruin him, if you do.
Now, come! I have got some of you under the harrow. Think twice, before
it goes over you. Think twice, you, Micawber, if you don't want to
be crushed. I recommend you to take yourself off, and be talked to
presently, you fool! while there's time to retreat. Where's mother?' he
said, suddenly appearing to notice, with alarm, the absence of Traddles,
and pulling down the bell-rope. 'Fine doings in a person's own house!'

'Mrs. Heep is here, sir,' said Traddles, returning with that worthy
mother of a worthy son. 'I have taken the liberty of making myself known
to her.'

'Who are you to make yourself known?' retorted Uriah. 'And what do you
want here?'

'I am the agent and friend of Mr. Wickfield, sir,' said Traddles, in a
composed and business-like way. 'And I have a power of attorney from him
in my pocket, to act for him in all matters.'

'The old ass has drunk himself into a state of dotage,' said Uriah,
turning uglier than before, 'and it has been got from him by fraud!'

'Something has been got from him by fraud, I know,' returned Traddles
quietly; 'and so do you, Mr. Heep. We will refer that question, if you
please, to Mr. Micawber.'

'Ury--!' Mrs. Heep began, with an anxious gesture.

'YOU hold your tongue, mother,' he returned; 'least said, soonest
mended.'

'But, my Ury--'

'Will you hold your tongue, mother, and leave it to me?'

Though I had long known that his servility was false, and all his
pretences knavish and hollow, I had had no adequate conception of the
extent of his hypocrisy, until I now saw him with his mask off. The
suddenness with which he dropped it, when he perceived that it was
useless to him; the malice, insolence, and hatred, he revealed; the leer
with which he exulted, even at this moment, in the evil he had done--all
this time being desperate too, and at his wits' end for the means
of getting the better of us--though perfectly consistent with the
experience I had of him, at first took even me by surprise, who had
known him so long, and disliked him so heartily.

I say nothing of the look he conferred on me, as he stood eyeing us,
one after another; for I had always understood that he hated me, and I
remembered the marks of my hand upon his che