As he hovered on the opposite side of the street,
exulting, the carriage drove up.
‘There’ll shortly be an end of you,’
said Wegg, threatening it with the hat-box. ‘Your
varnish is fading.’
Mrs Boffin descended and went in.
‘Look out for a fall, my Lady Dustwoman,’
said Wegg.
Bella lightly descended, and ran in after her.
‘How brisk we are!’ said Wegg. ’You
won’t run so gaily to your old shabby home,
my girl. You’ll have to go there, though.’
A little while, and the Secretary came out.
‘I was passed over for you,’ said Wegg.
’But you had better provide yourself with another
situation, young man.’
Mr Boffin’s shadow passed upon the blinds of
three large windows as he trotted down the room, and
passed again as he went back.
‘Yoop!’ cried Wegg. ’You’re
there, are you? Where’s the bottle?
You would give your bottle for my box, Dustman!’
Having now composed his mind for slumber, he turned
homeward. Such was the greed of the fellow, that
his mind had shot beyond halves, two-thirds, three-fourths,
and gone straight to spoliation of the whole.
‘Though that wouldn’t quite do,’
he considered, growing cooler as he got away.
’That’s what would happen to him if he
didn’t buy us up. We should get nothing
by that.’
We so judge others by ourselves, that it had never
come into his head before, that he might not buy us
up, and might prove honest, and prefer to be poor.
It caused him a slight tremor as it passed; but a very
slight one, for the idle thought was gone directly.
‘He’s grown too fond of money for that,’
said Wegg; ’he’s grown too fond of money.’
The burden fell into a strain or tune as he stumped
along the pavements. All the way home he stumped
it out of the rattling streets, piano with his
own foot, and Forte with his wooden leg, ’He’s
grown too fond of money for that,
he’s grown too fond of money.’
Even next day Silas soothed himself with this melodious
strain, when he was called out of bed at daybreak,
to set open the yard-gate and admit the train of carts
and horses that came to carry off the little Mound.
And all day long, as he kept unwinking watch on the
slow process which promised to protract itself through
many days and weeks, whenever (to save himself from
being choked with dust) he patrolled a little cinderous
beat he established for the purpose, without taking
his eyes from the diggers, he still stumped to the
tune: He’s grown too fond of
money for that, he’s grown too
fond of money.’
THE END OF A LONG JOURNEY
The train of carts and horses came and went all day
from dawn to nightfall, making little or no daily
impression on the heap of ashes, though, as the days
passed on, the heap was seen to be slowly melting.
My lords and gentlemen and honourable boards, when
you in the course of your dust-shovelling and cinder-raking
have piled up a mountain of pretentious failure, you
must off with your honourable coats for the removal
of it, and fall to the work with the power of all the
queen’s horses and all the queen’s men,
or it will come rushing down and bury us alive.
