With a ready patient face and manner, and yet with a latent smile that showed a quick enough observation of Mrs. Boffin’s dress, Mr. Milvey, in his little book-room⁠—charged with sounds and cries as though the six children above were coming down through the ceiling, and the roasting leg of mutton below were coming up through the floor⁠—listened to Mrs. Boffin’s statement of her want of an orphan.

“I think,” said Mr. Milvey, “that you have never had a child of your own, Mr. and Mrs. Boffin?”

Never.

“But, like the Kings and Queens in the fairy tales, I suppose you have wished for one?”