unhappy, and therefore Mother and I have been unhappy.«
    Clennam said that he could easily believe it.
    »Well!« continued Mr. Meagles, in an apologetic way, »I admit as a practical
man, and I am sure Mother would admit as a practical woman, that we do, in
families, magnify our troubles and make mountains of our molehills, in a way
that is calculated to be rather trying to people who look on - to mere outsiders
you know, Clennam. Still, Pet's happiness or unhappiness is quite a life or
death question with us; and we may be excused, I hope, for making much of it. At
all events, it might have been borne by Tattycoram. Now, don't you think so?«
    »I do indeed think so,« returned Clennam, in most emphatic recognition of
this very moderate expectation.
    »No, sir,« said Mr. Meagles, shaking his head ruefully. »She couldn't, stand
it. The chafing and firing of that girl, the wearing and tearing of that girl
within her own breast, has been such that I have softly said to her again and
again in passing her, Five-and-twenty, Tattycoram, five-and-twenty! I heartily
wish she could have gone on counting five-and-twenty day and night, and then it
wouldn't have happened.«
    Mr. Meagles, with a despondent countenance in which the goodness of his
heart was even more expressed than in his times of cheerfulness and gaiety,
stroked his face down from his forehead to his chin, and shook his head again.
    »I said to Mother (not that it was necessary, for she would have thought it
all for herself), we are practical people, my dear, and we know her story; we
see in this unhappy girl, some reflection of what was raging in her mother's
heart before ever such a creature as this poor thing was, in the world; we'll
gloss her temper over, Mother, we won't notice it at present, my dear, we'll
take advantage of some better disposition in her, another time. So we said
nothing. But, do what we would, it seems as if it was to be; she broke out
violently one night.«
    »How, and why?«
    »If you ask me Why,« said Mr. Meagles, a little disturbed by the question,
for he was far more intent on softening her case than the family's