David and Miss Mowcher, a flirty and flamboyant cosmetician lady with dwarfism, who caters to high society.
'I am surprised,' I began, 'to see you so distressed and serious'--when she interrupted me.
'Yes it always is so!' said she. 'They are all surprised, these inconsiderate young people, fairly and full grown, to see any natural feeling in a little thing like me! They make a plaything of me, use me for their own amusement, throw me away when they are tired, and wonder when I feel more than a toy horse or wooden soldier! Yes, yes, that's the way. The old way!'
'It may be, with others,' I returned, 'but I do assure you it is not with me. Perhaps I ought not to be at all surprised to see you as you are now: I know so little of you. I said, without consideration, what I thought.'
'What can I do?' returned the little woman, standing up, and holding out her arms to show herself. 'See! What I am, my father was; and my sister is; and my brother is. I have worked for sister and brother these many years--hard, Mr. Copperfield--all day. I must live. I do no harm. If there are people so unreflecting or so cruel, as to make jest of me, what is left for me but to jest of myself, them, and everything? If I do so, for the time, whose fault is that? Mine?'
No, not Miss Mowcher's, I perceived.
'If I had shown myself a sensitive dwarf to your false friend,' pursued the little woman, shaking her head at me, with reproachful earnestness, 'How much help or goodwill do you think I should ever have had? If little Mowcher (who had no hand, young gentlemen, in the making of herself) addressed herself to him, or the like of him, because of her misfortunes, when do you suppose her small voice would have been heard! Little Mowcher would have as much need to live, if she were the bitterest and dullest of pygmies; but she couldn't do it. No. She might whistle for her bread and butter till she died of Air.'
Miss Mowcher sat down on the fender again, and took out her handkerchief, and wiped her eyes.
'Be thankful for me, if you have a kind heart, as I think you have,' she said, 'that while I know well what I am, I can be cheerful and endure it all. I am thankful for myself, at any rate, that I can find my tiny way through the world, without being beholden to any one; and in return for all that is thrown at me, in folly or vanity, as I go along, I can throw bubbles back. If I don't brood over all I want, it is the better for me, and not worse for the sake of any one. If I am a plaything for you giants, be gentle with me.'
Miss Mowcher relates her piece of intelligence to David
'I must go,' she said at last, rising as she spoke. 'It's late. You don't mistrust me?'
Meeting her sharp glance, which was as sharp as ever when she asked me, I could not on that short challenge answer no, quite frankly.
'Come!' said she, accepting the offer of my hand to help her over the fender, and looking wistfully up into my face, 'you know you wouldn't mistrust me if I was a full-sized woman!'
I felt that there was much truth in this; and I felt rather ashamed of myself.
'You are a young man,' she said, nodding. 'Take a word of advice, even from three foot nothing. Try not to associate bodily defects with mental, my good friend, except for a solid reason.'
....
'Trust me no more, but trust me no less, than you would trust a full-sized woman,' said the little creature, touching me appealingly on the wrist, 'If you ever see me again, unlike what I am now, and like what I was when you first saw me, observe what company I am in. Call to mind that I am a very helpless and defenceless little thing. Think of me at home with my brother like myself and sister like myself, when my day's work is done. Perhaps you won't, then, be very hard upon me, or surprised if I can be distressed and serious. Good night!
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