And here she was
now, in her elderly days, with the Coriolanian style of nose and
the dense black eyebrows which had captivated Sparsit, making Mr.
Bounderby's tea as he took his breakfast.
If Bounderby had been a Conqueror, and Mrs. Sparsit a captive
Princess whom he took about as a feature in his state-processions,
he could not have made a greater flourish with her than he
habitually did. Just as it belonged to his boastfulness to
depreciate his own extraction, so it belonged to it to exalt Mrs.
Sparsit's. In the measure that he would not allow his own youth to
have been attended by a single favourable circumstance, he
brightened Mrs. Sparsit's juvenile career with every possible
advantage, and showered waggon-loads of early roses all over that
lady's path. 'And yet, sir,' he would say, 'how does it turn out
after all? Why here she is at a hundred a year (I give her a
hundred, which she is pleased to term handsome), keeping the house
of Josiah Bounderby of Coketown!'
Nay, he made this foil of his so very widely known, that third
parties took it up, and handled it on some occasions with
considerable briskness.
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