“Really, Master Copperfield,” he said, “—I should say Mister, but I know you’ll excuse the ’abit I’ve got into—you’re so insinuating, that you draw me like a corkscrew! Well, I don’t mind telling you,” putting his fish-like hand on mine, “I’m not a lady’s man in general, sir, and I never was, with Mrs. Strong.”
His eyes looked green now, as they watched mine with a rascally cunning.
“What do you mean?” said I.
“Why, though I am a lawyer, Master Copperfield,” he replied, with a dry grin, “I mean, just at present, what I say.”
“And what do you mean by your look?” I retorted, quietly.
“By my look? Dear me, Copperfield, that’s sharp practice! What do I mean by my look?”
“Yes,” said I. “By your look.”
He seemed very much amused, and laughed as heartily as it was in his nature to laugh. After some scraping of his chin with his hand, he went on to say, with his eyes cast downward—still scraping, very slowly:
“When I was but an ’umble clerk, she always looked down upon me. She was forever having my Agnes backwards and forwards at her ouse, and she was forever being a friend to you, Master Copperfield; but I was too far beneath her, myself, to be noticed.”
“Well?” said I; “suppose you were!”
“—And beneath him too,” pursued Uriah, very distinctly, and in a meditative tone of voice, as he continued to scrape his chin.