Charles Dickens

“ She is an edge-tool, and requires great care in dealing with. She is always dangerous. Good night!"
"Good night!" said I, "my dear Steerforth! I shall be gone before you wake in the morning. Good night!"
He was unwilling to let me go; and stood, holding me out, with a hand on each of my shoulders, as he had done in my own room.
"Daisy," he said, with a smile—"for though that's not the name your Godfathers and Godmothers gave you, it's the name I like best to call you by—and I wish, I wish, I wish, you could give it to me!" ”

“ As she still looked fixedly at me, a twitching or throbbing, from which I could not dissociate the idea of pain, came into that cruel mark; and lifted up the corner of her lip as if with scorn, or with a pity that despised its object. She put her hand upon it hurriedly—a hand so thin and delicate, that when I had seen her hold it up before the fire to shade her face, I had compared it in my thoughts to fine porcelain—and saying, in a quick, fierce, passionate way, "I swear you to secresy about this!" ”

“ When we all four went out walking in the afternoon, she closed her thin hand on my arm like a spring, to keep me back, while Steerforth and his mother went on out of hearing: and then spoke to me.
"You have been a long time," she said, "without coming here. Is your profession really so engaging and interesting as to absorb your whole attention? I ask because I always want to be informed, when I am ignorant. ”

“ We never know ourselves."
"It has become a second nature," said Mrs. Steerforth, without any displeasure; "but I remember,—and so must you, I think,—when your manner was different, Rosa; when it was not so guarded, and was more trustful." ”

“ Supposing then, for instance,—any unlikely thing will do for a supposition—that you and your mother were to have a serious quarrel."
"My dear Rosa," interposed Mrs. Steerforth, laughing good-naturedly, "suggest some other supposition! James and I know our duty to each other better, I pray Heaven!"
"Oh!" said Miss Dartle, nodding her head thoughtfully. "To be sure. That would prevent it? Why, of course it would. Ex-actly. Now, I am glad I have been so foolish as to put the case, for it is so very good to know that your duty to each other would prevent it! Thank you very much." ”

“ Spenlow very agreeably. It arose out of a scuffle between two church-wardens, one of whom was alleged to have pushed the other against a pump; the handle of which pump projecting into a school-house, which school-house was under a gable of the church roof, made the push an ecclesiastical offence. It was an amusing case; and sent me up to Highgate, on the box of the stage-coach, thinking about the Commons, and what Mr. Spenlow had said about touching the Commons and bringing down the country.
Mrs. Steerforth was pleased to see me, and so was Rosa Dartle. ”