It happened that Richard was sitting next to Rachel. She was curiously conscious of his presence and appearance—his well–cut clothes, his crackling shirt–front, his cuffs with blue rings round them, and the square–tipped, very clean fingers with the red stone on the little finger of the left hand.

"Of course I do, I remember his teeth as if I had just seen them."

When she had arrived at this reflection, Mrs Nickleby sighed, rubbed her hands, cast up her eyes, and finally assumed a look of meek composure; thus importing that she was a persecuted saint, but that she wouldn’t trouble her hearers by mentioning a circumstance which must be so obvious to everybody.