o
last! If my brother will not make an effort, Mrs Pipchin, what is to
become of him? I am sure I should have thought he had seen enough of the
consequences of not making an effort, by this time, to be warned against
that fatal error.'

'Hoity toity!' says Mrs Pipchin, rubbing her nose. 'There's a great
fuss, I think, about it. It ain't so wonderful a case. People have had
misfortunes before now, and been obliged to part with their furniture.
I'm sure I have!'

'My brother,' pursues Mrs Chick profoundly, 'is so peculiar--so strange
a man. He is the most peculiar man I ever saw. Would anyone believe that
when he received news of the marriage and emigration of that unnatural
child--it's a comfort to me, now, to remember that I always said there
was something extraordinary about that child: but nobody minds me--would
anybody believe, I say, that he should then turn round upon me and say
he had supposed, from my manner, that she had come to my house? Why,
my gracious! And would anybody believe that when I merely say to him,
"Paul, I may be very foolish, and I have no doubt I am, but I cannot
understand how your affairs can have got into this state," he should
actually fly at me, and request that I will come to see him no more
until he asks me! Why, my goodness!'

'Ah'!' says Mrs Pipchin. 'It's a pity he hadn't a little more to do with
mines. They'd have tried his temper for him.'

'And what,' resumes Mrs Chick, quite regardless of Mrs Pipchin's
observations, 'is it to end in? That's what I want to know. What does my
brother mean to do? He must do something. It's of no use remaining shut
up in his own rooms. Business won't come to him. No. He must go to it.
Then why don't he go? He knows where to go, I suppose, having been a man
of business all his life. Very good. Then why not go there?'

Mrs Chick, after forging this powerful chain of reasoning, remains
silent for a minute to admire it.

'Besides,' says the discreet lady, with an argumentative air, 'who ever
heard of such obstinacy as his staying shut up here through all these
dreadful disagreeables? It's not as if there was no place for him to go
to. Of course he could have come to our house. He knows he is at home
there, I suppose? Mr Chick has perfectly bored about it, and I said
with my own lips, "Why surely, Paul, you don't imagine that because your
affairs have got into this state, you are the less at home to such near
relatives as ourselves? You don't imagine