being an open as well as a perceptive one, was not without her husband’s latent smile.
“ Mrs. Boffin wishes to adopt a little boy, my dear.”
Mrs. Milvey, looking rather alarmed, her husband added:
“An orphan, my dear.”
“Oh!” said Mrs. Milvey, reassured for her own little boys.
“And I was thinking, Margaretta, that perhaps old Mrs. Goody’s grandchild might answer the purpose.”
“Oh my dear Frank! I don’t think that would do!”
“No?”
“Oh no !”
The smiling Mrs. Boffin, feeling it incumbent on her to take part in the conversation, and being charmed with the emphatic little wife and her ready interest, here offered her acknowledgments and inquired what there was against him?
“I don’t think,” said Mrs. Milvey, glancing at the Reverend Frank, “—and I believe my husband will agree with me when he considers it again—that you could possibly keep that orphan clean from snuff. Because his grandmother takes so many ounces, and drops it over him.”
“But he would not be living with his grandmother then, Margaretta,” said Mr. Milvey.
“No, Frank, but it would be impossible to keep her from Mrs. Boffin’s house; and the more there was to eat and drink there, the oftener she would go. And she is an inconvenient woman. I hope it’s not