Our Mutual Friend, page 169 by Charles Dickens
<< Return to Title Details & Download170
other was born, of course the rest of us knew (I mean the rest of us would have known, if we had been in existence) that he was heir to the Family Embarrassments--we call it before the company the Family Estate. But when my second brother was going to be born by-and-by, "this," says M. R. F., "is a little pillar of the church." WAS born, and became a pillar of the church; a very shaky one. My third brother appeared, considerably in advance of his engagement to my mother; but M. R. F., not at all put out by surprise, instantly declared him a Circumnavigator. Was pitch-forked into the Navy, but has not circumnavigated. I announced myself and was disposed of with the highly satisfactory results embodied before you. When my younger brother was half an hour old, it was settled by M. R. F. that he should have a mechanical genius. And so on. Therefore I say that M. R. F. amuses me.'
'Touching the lady, Eugene.'
'There M. R. F. ceases to be amusing, because my intentions are opposed to touching the lady.'
'Do you know her?'
'Not in the least.'
'Hadn't you better see her?'
'My dear Mortimer, you have studied my character. Could I possibly go down there, labelled "ELIGIBLE. ON VIEW," and meet the lady, similarly labelled? Anything to carry out M. R. F.'s arrangements, I am sure, with the greatest pleasure--except matrimony. Could I possibly support it? I, so soon bored, so constantly, so fatally?'
'But you are not a consistent fellow, Eugene.'
'In susceptibility to boredom,' returned that worthy, 'I assure you I am the most consistent of mankind.'
'Why, it was but now that you were dwelling in the advantages of a monotony of two.'
'In a lighthouse. Do me the justice to remember the condition. In a lighthouse.'
Mortimer laughed again, and Eugene, having laughed too for the first time, as if he found himself on reflection rather entertaining, relapsed into his usual gloom, and drowsily said, as he enjoyed his cigar, 'No, there is no help for it; one