Our Mutual Friend

by Charles Dickens

stationery

On his own small estate the growling old vagabond threw up his own mountain range, like an old volcano, and its geological formation was Dust. Coal-dust, vegetable-dust, bone-dust, crockery dust, rough dust and sifted dust,—all manner of Dust.'

she was secretly engaged to that popular character whom the novelists and versifiers call Another,

'The pecuniary resources of Another were, as they usually are, of a very limited nature. I believe

'We must now return, as novelists say, and as we all wish they wouldn't, to the

dexterously shunting a train of plates

There was a curious mixture in the boy, of uncompleted savagery, and uncompleted civilization.

No one who can read, ever looks at a book, even unopened on a shelf, like one who cannot.

your way is not ours, and

should be very glad to be able to read real books. I feel my want of learning very much,

in genealogy that no De Any ones ever came over with Anybody else.

I hate to be poor, and we are degradingly poor, offensively poor, miserably poor, beastly

it's too late for me to begin shovelling and sifting at alphabeds and grammar-books.

And herein he ranged with that very numerous class of impostors, who are quite as determined to keep up appearances

to themselves, as to their neighbours.

like a galvanic battery;

His wooden conceit and craft kept exact pace with the delighted expectation of his victim.

Wegg

red curtains matching the noses of the regular customers,

being one of Mr Wegg's guiding rules in life always to partake, he says he will.

'She knows the profits of it, but she don't appreciate the art of it, and

Boffin's acquaintances with the names and situations of foreign lands being limited in extent and somewhat confused in quality,

may call him Our Mutual Friend,' said Mr Boffin. 'What sort of a fellow IS Our Mutual Friend, now? Do you like him?'

traffic in Shares is the one thing to have to do with in this world.

a widowed female of a Medusa sort, in a stoney cap, glaring petrifaction at her fellow-creatures.

the nuptial journey to the Isle of Wight,

We have pretended well enough to one another. Can't we, united, pretend to the world?

PODSNAPPERY

'Our Language,' said Mr Podsnap, with a gracious consciousness of being always right, 'is Difficult. Ours is a Copious Language, and Trying to Strangers.

impugn

So fond of her!

Sarcasm

'Sophronia, are you awake?' 'Am I likely to be asleep, sir?' 'Very likely, I should think, after that fellow's company.

tip a whistle is to advertise mystery and invite speculation.

the staring black and white letters upon wharves and warehouses 'looked,' said Eugene to Mortimer, 'like inscriptions over the graves of dead businesses.'

constitutionally of a shirking temperament,

Being an orphan of a chubby conformation, he then took to rolling, and had rolled into the gutter before they could come up.

preternatural extent. A considerable

What does preternatural mean?

custard-coloured phaeton

The teachers, animated solely by good intentions, had no idea of execution,

an exceptionally sharp boy exceptionally determined to learn, could learn something, and, having learned it,

They were in a neighbourhood which looked like a toy neighbourhood taken

As if the child had given the table a kick, and gone to sleep.

'No, no, no. No children for me. Give me grown-ups.'

He was mooning about, I suppose, taking liberties with people's chins;

achievements in life to offend your family when your family want to get rid of you.

was a part of his avarice to take, within narrow bounds, long odds at races; if he won, he drove harder bargains; if he lost, he half starved himself until next time.

'Very difficult to fit too, because their figures are so uncertain. You never know where to expect their waists.'

'I should like to ask you,' said Bradley Headstone, grinding his words slowly out, as though they came from a rusty mill;

Rogue Riderhood dwelt deep and dark in Limehouse

(not being geographically particular),

'Nobody but my sister,' pursued Charley, 'would have found out such an extraordinary companion.