the more awkwardly,
because there was an unknown Barbara looking on and observing him.

It did not appear, however, that there was anything remarkably
tremendous about this strange Barbara, who having lived a very quiet
life, blushed very much and was quite as embarrassed and uncertain what
she ought to say or do, as Kit could possibly be. When he had sat for
some little time, attentive to the ticking of the sober clock, he
ventured to glance curiously at the dresser, and there, among the
plates and dishes, were Barbara's little work-box with a sliding lid to
shut in the balls of cotton, and Barbara's prayer-book, and Barbara's
hymn-book, and Barbara's Bible. Barbara's little looking-glass hung in
a good light near the window, and Barbara's bonnet was on a nail behind
the door. From all these mute signs and tokens of her presence, he
naturally glanced at Barbara herself, who sat as mute as they, shelling
peas into a dish; and just when Kit was looking at her eyelashes and
wondering--quite in the simplicity of his heart--what colour her eyes
might be, it perversely happened that Barbara raised her head a little
to look at him, when both pair of eyes were hastily withdrawn, and Kit
leant over his plate, and Barbara over her pea-shells, each in extreme
confusion at having been detected by the other.

CHAPTER 23

Mr Richard Swiveller wending homeward from the Wilderness (for such was
the appropriate name of Quilp's choice retreat), after a sinuous and
corkscrew fashion, with many checks and stumbles; after stopping
suddenly and staring about him, then as suddenly running forward for a
few paces, and as suddenly halting again and shaking his head; doing
everything with a jerk and nothing by premeditation;--Mr Richard
Swiveller wending his way homeward after this fashion, which is
considered by evil-minded men to be symbolical of intoxication, and is
not held by such persons to denote that state of deep wisdom and
reflection in which the actor knows himself to be, began to think that
possibly he had misplaced his confidence and that the dwarf might not
be precisely the sort of person to whom to entrust a secret of such
delicacy and importance. And being led and tempted on by this
remorseful thought into a condition which the evil-minded class before
referred to would term the maudlin state or stage of drunkenness, it
occurred to Mr Swiveller to cast his hat upon the ground, and moan,
crying aloud that he was an u