“I must try,” said Mr. Spenlow, confirmed by this support, “my influence with my daughter. Do you decline to take those letters, Mr. Copperfield?” For I had laid them on the table.
Yes. I told him I hoped he would not think it wrong, but I couldn’t possibly take them from Miss Murdstone.
“Nor from me?” said Mr. Spenlow.
No, I replied with the profoundest respect; nor from him.
“Very well!” said Mr. Spenlow.
A silence succeeding, I was undecided whether to go or stay. At length I was moving quietly towards the door, with the intention of saying that perhaps I should consult his feelings best by withdrawing: when he said, with his hands in his coat pockets, into which it was as much as he could do to get them; and with what I should call, upon the whole, a decidedly pious air:
“You are probably aware, Mr. Copperfield, that I am not altogether destitute of worldly possessions, and that my daughter is my nearest and dearest relative?”
I hurriedly made him a reply to the effect, that I hoped the error into which I had been betrayed by the desperate nature of my love, did not induce him to think me mercenary too?
“I don’t allude to the matter in that light,” said Mr. Spenlow. “It would be better for yourself, and all of us, if you were mercenary, Mr. Copperfield—I mean, if you were more discreet and less influenced by all this youthful nonsense. No. I merely say, with quite another view, you are probably aware I have some property to bequeath to my child?”