‘You know what it is, Uriah, as well as I do.’

‘Oh no! You must put it into words,’ he said. ‘Oh, really!

I couldn’t myself.’

‘Do you suppose,’ said I, constraining myself to be very temperate and quiet with him, on account of Agnes, ‘that I regard Miss Wickfield otherwise than as a very dear sister?’

‘Well, Master Copperfield,’ he replied, ‘you perceive I am not bound to answer that question. You may not, you know. But then, you see, you may!’

Anything to equal the low cunning of his visage, and of his shadowless eyes without the ghost of an eyelash, I never saw.