'Oh, Baal, Baal! oh my
friend, Mrs Todgers! To barter away that precious jewel, self-esteem,
and cringe to any mortal creature--for eighteen shillings a week!'
He was so subdued and overcome by the reflection, that he immediately
took down his hat from its peg in the passage, and went out for a walk,
to compose his feelings. Anybody passing him in the street might have
known him for a good man at first sight; for his whole figure teemed
with a consciousness of the moral homily he had read to Mrs Todgers.
Eighteen shillings a week! Just, most just, thy censure, upright
Pecksniff! Had it been for the sake of a ribbon, star, or garter;
sleeves of lawn, a great man's smile, a seat in parliament, a tap upon
the shoulder from a courtly sword; a place, a party, or a thriving lie,
or eighteen thousand pounds, or even eighteen hundred;--but to worship
the golden calf for eighteen shillings a week! oh pitiful, pitiful!
CHAPTER ELEVEN
WHEREIN A CERTAIN GENTLEMAN BECOMES PARTICULAR IN HIS ATTENTIONS TO A
CERTAIN LADY; AND MORE COMING EVENTS THAN ONE, CAST THEIR SHADOWS BEFORE
The family were within two or three days of their departure from Mrs
Todgers's, and the commercial gentlemen were to a man despondent and
not to be comforted, because of the approaching separation, when Bailey
junior, at the jocund time of noon, presented himself before Miss
Charity Pecksniff, then sitting with her sister in the banquet chamber,
hemming six new pocket-handkerchiefs for Mr Jinkins; and having
expressed a hope, preliminary and pious, that he might be blest, gave
her in his pleasant way to understand that a visitor attended to pay
his respects to her, and was at that moment waiting in the drawing-room.
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