air
of effort.

"Ah, pigeon-holes will not do. I have tried pigeon-holes, but
everything gets mixed in pigeon-holes: I never know whether a paper is
in A or Z."

"I wish you would let me sort your papers for you, uncle," said
Dorothea. "I would letter them all, and then make a list of subjects
under each letter."

Mr. Casaubon gravely smiled approval, and said to Mr. Brooke, "You have
an excellent secretary at hand, you perceive."

"No, no," said Mr. Brooke, shaking his head; "I cannot let young ladies
meddle with my documents. Young ladies are too flighty."

Dorothea felt hurt. Mr. Casaubon would think that her uncle had some
special reason for delivering this opinion, whereas the remark lay in
his mind as lightly as the broken wing of an insect among all the other
fragments there, and a chance current had sent it alighting on _her_.

When the two girls were in the drawing-room alone, Celia said--

"How very ugly Mr. Casaubon is!"

"Celia! He is one of the most distinguished-looking men I ever saw.
He is remarkably like the portrait of Locke. He has the same deep
eye-sockets."

"Had Locke those two white moles with hairs on them?"

"Oh, I dare say! when people of a certain sort looked at him," said
Dorothea, walking away a little.

"Mr. Casaubon is so sallow."

"All the better. I suppose you admire a man with the complexion of a
cochon de lait."

"Dodo!" exclaimed Celia, looking after her in surprise. "I never heard
you make such a comparison before."

"Why should I make it before the occasion came? It is a good
comparison: the match is perfect."

Miss Brooke was clearly forgetting herself, and Celia thought so.

"I wonder you show temper, Dorothea."

"It is so painful in you, Celia, that you will look at human beings as
if they were merely animals with a toilet, and never see the great soul
in a man's face."

"Has Mr. Casaubon a great soul?" Celia was not without a touch of naive
malice.

"Yes, I believe he has," said Dorothea, with the full voice of
decision. "Everything I see in him corresponds to his pamphlet on
Biblical Cosmology."

"He talks very little," said Celia

"There is no one for him to talk to."

Celia thought privately, "Dorothea quite despises Sir James Chettam; I
believe she would not accept him." Celia felt that this was a pity.
She had never been deceived as to the object of the baronet's interest.
Sometimes, indeed, she had reflected that Dodo would perhaps