FINAL

IT is a dangerous thing to see anything in the sphere of a vain blusterer, before the vain blusterer sees it himself. Mr. Bounderby felt that Mrs. Sparsit had audaciously anticipated him, and presumed to be wiser than he. Inappeasably indignant with her for her triumphant discovery of Mrs. Pegler, he turned this presumption, on the part of a woman in her dependent position, over and over in his mind, until it accumulated with turning like a great snowball. At last he made the discovery that to discharge this highly connected female—to have it in his power to say, ‘She was a woman of family, and wanted to stick to me, but I wouldn’t have it, and got rid of her’—would be to get the utmost possible amount of crowning glory out of the connection, and at the same time to punish Mrs. Sparsit according to her deserts.

Filled fuller than ever, with this great idea, Mr. Bounderby came in to lunch, and sat himself down in the dining-room of former days, where his portrait was. Mrs. Sparsit sat by the fire, with her foot in her cotton stirrup, little thinking whither she was posting.

Since the Pegler affair, this gentlewoman had covered her pity for Mr. Bounderby with a veil of quiet melancholy and contrition. In virtue thereof, it had become her habit to assume a woful look, which woful look she now bestowed upon her patron.

‘What’s the matter now, ma’am?’ said Mr. Bounderby, in a very short, rough way.

‘Pray, sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit, ‘do not bite my nose off.’

‘Bite your nose off, ma’am?’ repeated Mr. Bounderby. ‘_Your_ nose!’ meaning, as Mrs. Sparsit conceived, that it was too developed a nose for the purpose. After which offensive implication, he cut himself a crust of bread, and threw the knife down with a noise.

Mrs. Sparsit took her foot out of her stirrup, and said, ‘Mr. Bounderby, sir!’

‘Well, ma’am?’ retorted Mr. Bounderby. ‘What are you staring at?’

‘May I ask, sir,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, ‘have you been ruffled this morning?’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘May I inquire, sir,’ pursued the injured woman, ‘whether _I_ am the unfortunate cause of your having lost your temper?’

‘Now, I’ll tell you what, ma’am,’ said Bounderby, ‘I am not come here to be bullied. A female may be highly connected, but she can’t be permitted to bother and badger a man in my position, and I am not going to put up with it.’ (Mr. Bounderby felt it necessary to get on: foreseeing that if he allowed of details, he would be beaten.)

Mrs. Sparsit first elevated, then knitted, her Coriolanian eyebrows; gathered up her work into its proper basket; and rose.