the midst of a voluminous correspondence, opening, reading, and sorting letters, with a great accumulation of torn covers on the floor. She was so preoccupied that at first she did not know me, though she sat looking at me with that curious, bright-eyed, far-off look of hers.
“Ah! Miss Summerson!” she said at last. “I was thinking of something so different! I hope you are well. I am happy to see you. Mr. Jarndyce and Miss Clare quite well?”
I hoped in return that Mr. Jellyby was quite well.
“Why, not quite, my dear,” said Mrs. Jellyby in the calmest manner. “He has been unfortunate in his affairs and is a little out of spirits. Happily for me, I am so much engaged that I have no time to think about it. We have, at the present moment, one hundred and seventy families, Miss Summerson, averaging five persons in each, either gone or going to the left bank of the Niger.”
I thought of the one family so near us who were neither gone nor going to the left bank of the Niger, and wondered how she could be so placid.
“You have brought Caddy back, I see,” observed Mrs. Jellyby with a glance at her daughter. “It has become quite a novelty to see her here. She has almost deserted her old employment and in fact obliges me to employ a boy.”
“I am sure, Ma—” began Caddy.
“Now you know, Caddy,” her mother mildly interposed, “that I do employ a boy, who is now at his dinner. What is the use of your contradicting?”
“I was not going to contradict, Ma,” returned Caddy. “I was only going to say that surely you wouldn’t have me be a mere drudge all my life.”