Old Betty was proof even against this temptation,
and fell to adjusting her black bonnet and shawl.
‘I wouldn’t let you go, now it comes to
this, after all,’ said Mr Boffin, ’if
I didn’t hope that it may make a man and a workman
of Sloppy, in as short a time as ever a man and workman
was made yet. Why, what have you got there, Betty?
Not a doll?’
It was the man in the Guards who had been on duty
over Johnny’s bed. The solitary old woman
showed what it was, and put it up quietly in her dress.
Then, she gratefully took leave of Mrs Boffin, and
of Mr Boffin, and of Rokesmith, and then put her old
withered arms round Bella’s young and blooming
neck, and said, repeating Johnny’s words:
’A kiss for the boofer lady.’
The Secretary looked on from a doorway at the boofer
lady thus encircled, and still looked on at the boofer
lady standing alone there, when the determined old
figure with its steady bright eyes was trudging through
the streets, away from paralysis and pauperism.
THE WHOLE CASE SO FAR
Bradley Headstone held fast by that other interview
he was to have with Lizzie Hexam. In stipulating
for it, he had been impelled by a feeling little short
of desperation, and the feeling abided by him.
It was very soon after his interview with the Secretary,
that he and Charley Hexam set out one leaden evening,
not unnoticed by Miss Peecher, to have this desperate
interview accomplished.
‘That dolls’ dressmaker,’ said Bradley,
’is favourable neither to me nor to you, Hexam.’
’A pert crooked little chit, Mr Headstone!
I knew she would put herself in the way, if she could,
and would be sure to strike in with something impertinent.
It was on that account that I proposed our going to
the City to-night and meeting my sister.’
‘So I supposed,’ said Bradley, getting
his gloves on his nervous hands as he walked.
‘So I supposed.’
‘Nobody but my sister,’ pursued Charley,
’would have found out such an extraordinary
companion. She has done it in a ridiculous fancy
of giving herself up to another. She told me
so, that night when we went there.’
‘Why should she give herself up to the dressmaker?’
asked Bradley.
‘Oh!’ said the boy, colouring. ’One
of her romantic ideas! I tried to convince her
so, but I didn’t succeed. However, what
we have got to do, is, to succeed to-night, Mr Headstone,
and then all the rest follows.’
‘You are still sanguine, Hexam.’
‘Certainly I am, sir. Why, we have everything
on our side.’
‘Except your sister, perhaps,’ thought
Bradley. But he only gloomily thought it, and
said nothing.
‘Everything on our side,’ repeated the
boy with boyish confidence. ’Respectability,
an excellent connexion for me, common sense, everything!’
‘To be sure, your sister has always shown herself
a devoted sister,’ said Bradley, willing to
sustain himself on even that low ground of hope.
