Thanks, Pat H, I was pretty sure I had jumped ahead. But that's OK, it doesn't really give anything away. The scene I was referring to comes just a little later, in next week's reading. We'll worry about the swarthy Tartar later.
I've been thinking about the meeting in "Both at Their Best" when Rosa explains to Ned that their marriage isn't a good idea and exactly why. I was really impressed with her maturity. Even Ned behaves, possibly for the first time, like a grown-up. Apparently he has listened to Grewgious who tried his best to explain to Ned how important it was for him to take giving the precious ring to Rosa seriously.
"If Rosebud in her bower now waited Edwin Drood's coming with an uneasy heart, Edwin for his part was uneasy too. with far less force of purpose in his composition than the childish beauty, crowned by acclamation fairy queen of Miss Twinkleton's establishment, he had a conscience, and Mr Grewgious had pricked it. that gentleman's steady convictions of what was right and what was wrong in such a case as his, were neither to be frowned aside nor laughed aside. They would not be moved. But for the dinner in Staple Inn, and but for the ring he carried in the breast-pocket of his coat, he would have drifted into their wedding day without another pause for real thought, loosely trusting that all would go well, left alone. But that serious putting him on his truth to the living and the dead had brought him to a check. He must either give the ring to Rosa, or he must take it back. Once put into this narrowed way of action, it was curious that he began to consider Rosa's claims upon him more unselfishly than he had ever considered them before, and began to be less sure of himself than he had ever been in all his easy-going days."
Sorry to quote at such length, but the passage shows that Ned is growing up, that he does have a conscience and a thought for someone else beside himself after all. I begin to think better of him.
Rosa is also at her best. As soon as they begin their walk, Rosa broaches the topic--bravely I think. First she says she must say something serious to him and then, just a few lines later, she says straight out, "That's a dear boy! Eddy, let us be courageous. Let us change to brother and sister from this day forth."
Rosa explains to Ned that he always thought highly of her, just the as others did, and that this simply isn't enough. There needs to be more of a basis if they are to marry. Added to the points that Grewgious made which Ned has already been thinking of, he finally comes to:
"It was new and strange to him to have himself presented to himself so clearly, in a glass of her holding up. He had always patronized her, in his superiority to her share of woman's wit. Was that but another instance of something radically amiss in the terms on which they had been gliding towards a life-long bondage?"
Did everyone notice that the earlier Chapter 9 was entitled "Birds in the Bush"? That's the one with the interview between Grewgious and Rosa where the terms of her father's will and his wishes are explained to her. Alliteratively--all those b's--it connects to this one.
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