Mr. Swiveller's quotations are largely connected with his love-passages with Sophy Wackles, and they are so carefully and delicately graded that they practically cover the whole ground in the rise and decline of his affections. He begins by suggesting that 'she's all my fancy painted her.'
She's like the red, red rose, That's newly sprung in June. She's also like a melody, That's sweetly played in tune.
When the heart of a man is depressed with fears, The mist is dispelled when Miss Wackles appears,
If the heart of a man is depressed with care, The mist is dispelled when a woman appears.
But at the party given by the Wackleses Dick finds he is cut out by Mr. Cheggs, and so makes his escape saying, as he goes--
My boat is on the shore, and my bark is on the sea; but before I pass this door, I will say farewell to thee,
Miss Wackles, I believed you true, and I was blessed in so believing; but now I mourn that e'er I knew a girl so fair, yet so deceiving.
The _dénouement_ occurs some time after, when, in the course of an interview with Quilp, he takes from his pocket
a small and very greasy parcel, slowly unfolding it, and displaying a little slab of plum cake, extremely indigestible in appearance and bordered with a paste of sugar an inch and a half deep.
'What should you say this was?' demanded Mr. Swiveller.
'It looks like bride-cake,' replied the dwarf, grinning.
'And whose should you say it was?' inquired Mr. Swiveller, rubbing the pastry against his nose with dreadful calmness. 'Whose?'
'Yes,' said Dick, 'the same. You needn't mention her name. There's no such name now. Her name is Cheggs now, Sophy Cheggs. Yet loved I as man never loved that hadn't wooden legs, and my heart, my heart is breaking for the love of Sophy Cheggs.'
With this extemporary adaptation of a popular ballad to the distressing circumstances of his own case, Mr. Swiveller folded up the parcel again, beat it very flat upon the palms of his hands, thrust it into his breast, buttoned his coat over it, and folded his arms upon the whole.
And then he signifies his grief by pinning a piece of crape on his hat, saying as he did so,
'Twas ever thus: from childhood's hour I've seen my fondest hopes decay; I never loved a tree or flower But 'twas the first to fade away; I never nursed a dear gazelle, To glad me with its soft black eye, But when it came to know me well, And love me, it was sure to marry a market gardener.