BOOK THE SECOND - REAPING
1. Chapter I - Effects in the Bank (continued)
A deaf serving-woman and the light porter completed Mrs. Sparsit's
empire. The deaf serving-woman was rumoured to be wealthy; and a
saying had for years gone about among the lower orders of Coketown,
that she would be murdered some night when the Bank was shut, for
the sake of her money. It was generally considered, indeed, that
she had been due some time, and ought to have fallen long ago; but
she had kept her life, and her situation, with an ill-conditioned
tenacity that occasioned much offence and disappointment.
Mrs. Sparsit's tea was just set for her on a pert little table,
with its tripod of legs in an attitude, which she insinuated after
office-hours, into the company of the stern, leathern-topped, long
board-table that bestrode the middle of the room. The light porter
placed the tea-tray on it, knuckling his forehead as a form of
homage.
'Thank you, Bitzer,' said Mrs. Sparsit.
'Thank you, ma'am,' returned the light porter. He was a very light
porter indeed; as light as in the days when he blinkingly defined a
horse, for girl number twenty.
'All is shut up, Bitzer?' said Mrs. Sparsit.
'All is shut up, ma'am.'
'And what,' said Mrs. Sparsit, pouring out her tea, 'is the news of
the day? Anything?'
'Well, ma'am, I can't say that I have heard anything particular.
Our people are a bad lot, ma'am; but that is no news,
unfortunately.'
'What are the restless wretches doing now?' asked Mrs. Sparsit.
'Merely going on in the old way, ma'am. Uniting, and leaguing, and
engaging to stand by one another.'
'It is much to be regretted,' said Mrs. Sparsit, making her nose
more Roman and her eyebrows more Coriolanian in the strength of her
severity, 'that the united masters allow of any such class-
combinations.'
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