He was beginning to feel on Mirah's behalf something of what he had felt for himself in his seraphic boyish time, when Sir Hugo asked him if he would like to be a great singer--an indignant dislike to her being remarked on in a free and easy way, as if she were an imported commodity disdainfully paid for by the fashionable public, and he winced the more because Mordecai, he knew, would feel that the name "Jewess" was taken as a sort of stamp like the lettering of Chinese silk. 
He was beginning to feel on Mirah's behalf what he had felt as a boy, when Sir Hugo asked him if he would like to be a great singer - an indignant dislike to her being remarked on in a free and easy way, as if she were a commodity disdainfully paid for by the fashionable public. 