 expressive sound, a long-drawn respiration, which was
neither a sigh nor a moan, but was like both, gave it as her opinion that he
should have done this at first.
    »I must try,« said Mr. Spenlow, confirmed by this support, »my influence
with my daughter. Do you decline to take those letters, Mr. Copperfield?« For I
had laid them on the table.
    Yes. I told him I hoped he would not think it wrong, but I couldn't possibly
take them from Miss Murdstone.
    »Nor from me?« said Mr. Spenlow.
    No, I replied with the profoundest respect; nor from him.
    »Very well!« said Mr. Spenlow.
    A silence succeeding, I was undecided whether to go or stay. At length I was
moving quietly towards the door, with the intention of saying that perhaps I
should consult his feelings best by withdrawing: when he said, with his hands in
his coat pockets, into which it was as much as he could do to get them; and with
what I should call, upon the whole, a decidedly pious air:
    »You are probably aware, Mr. Copperfield, that I am not altogether destitute
of worldly possessions, and that my daughter is my nearest and dearest
relative?«
    I hurriedly made him a reply to the effect, that I hoped the error into
which I had been betrayed by the desperate nature of my love, did not induce him
to think me mercenary too?
    »I don't allude to the matter in that light,« said Mr. Spenlow. »It would be
better for yourself, and all of us, if you were mercenary, Mr. Copperfield - I
mean, if you were more discreet, and less influenced by all this youthful
nonsense. No. I merely say, with quite another view, you are probably aware I
have some property to bequeath to my child!«
    I certainly supposed so.
    »And you can hardly think,« said Mr. Spenlow, »having experience of what we
see, in the Commons here, every day, of the various unaccountable and negligent
proceedings of men, in respect of their testamentary arrangements - of all
subjects, the one on which perhaps the strangest revelations of human
inconsistency are to be met with - but that mine are made?«
    I inclined my head in acquiescence.
    »I should not allow,« said Mr. Spenlow, with an evident increase of pious
sentiment, and slowly shaking his head as he poised himself upon his toes and
heels alternately
