Charles Dickens

“ Mrs Boffin looked on the other three members of Council, and then said, beckoning with her finger:
'Sloppy.'
'Yes, mum.'
'Come forward, Sloppy. Should you like to dine here every day?'
'Off of all four on 'em, mum? O mum!' Sloppy's feelings obliged him to squeeze his hat, and contract one leg at the knee.
'Yes. And should you like to be always taken care of here, if you were industrious and deserving?'
'Oh, mum!--But there's Mrs Higden,' said Sloppy, checking himself in his raptures, drawing back, and shaking his head with very serious meaning. 'There's Mrs Higden. Mrs Higden goes before all. ”

“ Indeed, the Reverend Frank Milvey was a forbearing man, who noticed many sad warps and blights in the vineyard wherein he worked, and did not profess that they made him savagely wise. He only learned that the more he himself knew, in his little limited human way, the better he could distantly imagine what Omniscience might know. ”

“ Mr and Mrs Milvey have sent me the kindest note possible (which Mr Rokesmith just now read to me out aloud, for I ain't good at handwritings) , offering to find me another little child to name and educate and bring up. Well. This has set me thinking.'
('And she is a steam-ingein at it,' murmured Mr Boffin, in an admiring parenthesis, 'when she once begins. It mayn't be so easy to start her; but once started, she's a ingein.')
'--This has set me thinking, I say,' repeated Mrs Boffin, cordially beaming under the influence of her husband's compliment, 'and I have thought two things. ”

“ That's as it may happen. A well-disposed boy comes in my way who may be even a little wanting in such advantages for getting on in life, but is honest and industrious and requires a helping hand and deserves it. If I am very much in earnest and quite determined to be unselfish, let me take care of HIM.'
Here the footman whose feelings had been hurt on the former occasion, appeared, and crossing to Rokesmith apologetically announced the objectionable Sloppy.
The four members of Council looked at one another, and paused. 'Shall he be brought here, ma'am?' asked Rokesmith.
'Yes,' said Mrs Boffin. ”

“ It is, as Mr Rokesmith says, a matter of feeling, but Lor how many matters ARE matters of feeling! Well; and so I come to the second thing I have thought of. You must know, Bella, my dear, and Mr Rokesmith, that when I first named to my husband my thoughts of adopting a little orphan boy in remembrance of John Harmon, I further named to my husband that it was comforting to think that how the poor boy would be benefited by John's own money, and protected from John's own forlornness.'
'Hear, hear!' cried Mr Boffin. 'So she did. ”