and that’s a reason why you want relief and change — excitement and all that?’ said she. ‘Ah! very true! But isn’t it a little — Eh? — for him; I don’t mean you?’

A quick glance of her eye towards the spot where Steerforth was walking, with his mother leaning on his arm, showed me whom she meant; but beyond that, I was quite lost. And I looked so, I have no doubt.

‘Don’t it — I don’t say that it does, mind I want to know — don’t it rather engross him?

Don’t it make him, perhaps, a little more remiss than usual in his visits to his blindly-doting — eh?’ With another quick glance at them, and such a glance at me as seemed to look into my innermost thoughts.