Lavvy declining equally to repeat or to explain, Bella gradually lapsed over her hairdressing into a soliloquy on the miseries of being poor, as exemplified in having nothing to put on, nothing to go out in, nothing to dress by, only a nasty box to dress at instead of a commodious dressing-table, and being obliged to take in suspicious lodgers. On the last grievance as her climax, she laid great stress⁠—and might have laid greater, had she known that if Mr. Julius Handford had a twin brother upon earth, Mr. John Rokesmith was the man.

Boffin’s Bower