“We are too ’umble, sir,” said Mrs. Heep, “my son and me, to be the friends of Master Copperfield. He has been so good as take his tea with us, and we are thankful to him for his company, also to you, sir, for your notice.”
“Ma’am,” returned Mr. Micawber, with a bow, “you are very obliging: and what are you doing, Copperfield? Still in the wine trade?”
I was excessively anxious to get Mr. Micawber away; and replied, with my hat in my hand, and a very red face, I have no doubt, that I was a pupil at Doctor Strong’s.
“A pupil?” said Mr. Micawber, raising his eyebrows. “I am extremely happy to hear it. Although a mind like my friend Copperfield’s”—to Uriah and Mrs. Heep—“does not require that cultivation which, without his knowledge of men and things, it would require, still it is a rich soil teeming with latent vegetation—in short,” said Mr. Micawber, smiling, in another burst of confidence, “it is an intellect capable of getting up the classics to any extent.”
Uriah, with his long hands slowly twining over one another, made a ghastly writhe from the waist upwards, to express his concurrence in this estimation of