Mr Boffin, lost in amazement, looked at Mrs Boffin.
Mrs Boffin, lost in her own fluttered inability to
make this out, looked at Mr Boffin.
‘I think, my dear,’ said the Golden Dustman,
’I’ll at once get rid of Wegg for the
night, because he’s coming to inhabit the Bower,
and it might be put into his head or somebody else’s,
if he heard this and it got about that the house is
haunted. Whereas we know better. Don’t
we?’
‘I never had the feeling in the house before,’
said Mrs Boffin; ’and I have been about it alone
at all hours of the night. I have been in the
house when Death was in it, and I have been in the
house when Murder was a new part of its adventures,
and I never had a fright in it yet.’
‘And won’t again, my dear,’ said
Mr Boffin. ’Depend upon it, it comes of
thinking and dwelling on that dark spot.’
‘Yes; but why didn’t it come before?’
asked Mrs Boffin.
This draft on Mr Boffin’s philosophy could only
be met by that gentleman with the remark that everything
that is at all, must begin at some time. Then,
tucking his wife’s arm under his own, that she
might not be left by herself to be troubled again,
he descended to release Wegg. Who, being something
drowsy after his plentiful repast, and constitutionally
of a shirking temperament, was well enough pleased
to stump away, without doing what he had come to do,
and was paid for doing.
Mr Boffin then put on his hat, and Mrs Boffin her
shawl; and the pair, further provided with a bunch
of keys and a lighted lantern, went all over the dismal
house—dismal everywhere, but in their own
two rooms—from cellar to cock-loft.
Not resting satisfied with giving that much chace
to Mrs Boffin’s fancies, they pursued them into
the yard and outbuildings, and under the Mounds.
And setting the lantern, when all was done, at the
foot of one of the Mounds, they comfortably trotted
to and fro for an evening walk, to the end that the
murky cobwebs in Mrs Boffin’s brain might be
blown away.
There, my dear!’ said Mr Boffin when they came
in to supper. ’That was the treatment,
you see. Completely worked round, haven’t
you?’
‘Yes, deary,’ said Mrs Boffin, laying
aside her shawl. ’I’m not nervous
any more. I’m not a bit troubled now.
I’d go anywhere about the house the same as
ever. But—’
‘Eh!’ said Mr Boffin.
‘But I’ve only to shut my eyes.’
‘And what then?’
‘Why then,’ said Mrs Boffin, speaking
with her eyes closed, and her left hand thoughtfully
touching her brow, ’then, there they are!
The old man’s face, and it gets younger.
The two children’s faces, and they get older.
A face that I don’t know. And then all the
faces!’
Opening her eyes again, and seeing her husband’s
face across the table, she leaned forward to give
it a pat on the cheek, and sat down to supper, declaring
it to be the best face in the world.
