‘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: