Charles Dickens

“ If I am uncomplaining, if I am silently contented with my lot, let that suffice for my family.'
'Well, Ma,' returned Lavvy, 'since you will force it out of me, I must respectfully take leave to say that your family are no doubt under the greatest obligations to you for having an annual toothache on your wedding day, and that it's very disinterested in you, and an immense blessing to them. Still, on the whole, it is possible to be too boastful even of that boon.'
'You incarnation of sauciness,' said Mrs Wilfer, 'do you speak like that to me? On this day, of all days in the year? ”

“ The confidences of lovely women are not to be slighted. However, I forgive you this once, and look here, Pa; that's'--Bella laid the little forefinger of her right glove on her lip, and then laid it on her father's lip--'that's a kiss for you. And now I am going seriously to tell you--let me see how many--four secrets. Mind! Serious, grave, weighty secrets. Strictly between ourselves.'
'Number one, my dear?' said her father, settling her arm comfortably and confidentially.
'Number one,' said Bella, 'will electrify you, Pa. ”

“ I replied it was not the stature, but the intellect was too lofty. At our house, I said, the tone was too brilliant, the pressure was too high, to be maintained by me, a mere woman, in every-day domestic life. ”

“ Lavvy, sitting with defiantly folded arms, replied (but not audibly) , 'For goodness' sake say whichever of the two you like best, Ma, and get it over.'
'The mind,' pursued Mrs Wilfer in an oratorical manner, 'naturally reverts to Papa and Mamma--I here allude to my parents--at a period before the earliest dawn of this day. I was considered tall; perhaps I was. Papa and Mamma were unquestionably tall. I have rarely seen a finer women than my mother ”