'It is, as you say, quite a form to ask.

Here is Mr Dombey's letter, Edith.' 'Thank you.

I have no desire to read it,' was her answer.
'Then perhaps I had better answer it myself,' said Mrs Skewton, 'though I had thought of asking you to be my secretary, darling.' As Edith made no movement, and no answer, Mrs Skewton begged the Major to wheel her little table nearer, and to set open the desk it contained, and to take out pen and paper for her; all which congenial offices of gallantry the Major discharged, with much submission and devotion.
'Your regards, Edith, my dear ?' said Mrs Skewton, pausing, pen in hand, at the postscript.
'What you will, Mama,' she answered, without turning her head, and with supreme indifference.
Mrs Skewton wrote what she would, without seeking for any more explicit directions, and handed her letter to the Major, who receiving it as a precious charge, made a show of laying it near his heart, but was fain to put it in the pocket of his pantaloons on account of the insecurity of his waistcoat The Major then took a very polished and chivalrous farewell of both ladies, which the elder one acknowledged in her usual manner, while the younger, sitting with her face addressed to the window, bent her head so slightly that it would have been a greater compliment to the Major to have made no sign at all, and to have left him to infer that he had not been heard or thought of.
'As to alteration in her, Sir,' mused the Major on his way back; on which expedition--the afternoon being sunny and hot--he ordered the Native and the light baggage to the front, and walked in the shadow of that expatriated prince: 'as to alteration, Sir, and pining, and so forth, that won't go down with Joseph Bagstock, None of that, Sir.

It won't do here.

But as to there being something of a division between 'em--or a gulf as the mother calls it--damme, Sir, that seems true enough.