‘Oh, my loved husband!’ said Mrs Boffin.
’This is hard to see and hear. But my dear
Bella, believe me that in spite of all the change in
him, he is the best of men.’
He came back, at the moment when Bella had taken the
hand comfortingly between her own.
‘Eh?’ said he, mistrustfully looking in
at the door. ’What’s she telling
you?’
‘She is only praising you, sir,’ said
Bella.
’Praising me? You are sure? Not blaming
me for standing on my own defence against a crew of
plunderers, who could suck me dry by driblets?
Not blaming me for getting a little hoard together?’
He came up to them, and his wife folded her hands
upon his shoulder, and shook her head as she laid
it on her hands.
‘There, there, there!’ urged Mr Boffin,
not unkindly. ’Don’t take on, old
lady.’
‘But I can’t bear to see you so, my dear.’
’Nonsense! Recollect we are not our old
selves. Recollect, we must scrunch or be scrunched.
Recollect, we must hold our own. Recollect, money
makes money. Don’t you be uneasy, Bella,
my child; don’t you be doubtful. The more
I save, the more you shall have.’
Bella thought it was well for his wife that she was
musing with her affectionate face on his shoulder;
for there was a cunning light in his eyes as he said
all this, which seemed to cast a disagreeable illumination
on the change in him, and make it morally uglier.
THE GOLDEN DUSTMAN FALLS INTO WORSE COMPANY
It had come to pass that Mr Silas Wegg now rarely
attended the minion of fortune and the worm of the
hour, at his (the worm’s and minion’s)
own house, but lay under general instructions to await
him within a certain margin of hours at the Bower.
Mr Wegg took this arrangement in great dudgeon, because
the appointed hours were evening hours, and those he
considered precious to the progress of the friendly
move. But it was quite in character, he bitterly
remarked to Mr Venus, that the upstart who had trampled
on those eminent creatures, Miss Elizabeth, Master
George, Aunt Jane, and Uncle Parker, should oppress
his literary man.
The Roman Empire having worked out its destruction,
Mr Boffin next appeared in a cab with Rollin’s
Ancient History, which valuable work being found to
possess lethargic properties, broke down, at about
the period when the whole of the army of Alexander
the Macedonian (at that time about forty thousand
strong) burst into tears simultaneously, on his being
taken with a shivering fit after bathing. The
Wars of the Jews, likewise languishing under Mr Wegg’s
generalship, Mr Boffin arrived in another cab with
Plutarch: whose Lives he found in the sequel
extremely entertaining, though he hoped Plutarch might
not expect him to believe them all. What to believe,
in the course of his reading, was Mr Boffin’s
chief literary difficulty indeed; for some time he
was divided in his mind between half, all, or none;
at length, when he decided, as a moderate man, to
compound with half, the question still remained, which
half? And that stumbling-block he never got over.
