Our Mutual Friend quotes

“No.

Has a dead man any use for money?

Is it possible for a dead man to have money? What world does a dead man belong to? T’other world. What world does money belong to? This world. How can money be a corpse’s?

Mr. and Mrs. Veneering were bran-new people in a bran-new house in a bran-new quarter of London.

Everything about the Veneerings was spick and span new.

All their furniture was new, all their friends were new, all their servants were new, their plate was new, their carriage was new, their harness was new, their horses were new, their pictures were new, they themselves were new, they were as newly married as …

but he was cleaner than other boys of his type; and his writing, though large and round, was good; and he glanced at the backs of the books, with an awakened curiosity that went below the binding.

No one who can read, ever looks at a book, even unopened on a shelf, like one who cannot.

“Were any means taken, do you know, boy, to ascertain if it was possible to restore life?” Mortimer inquired, as he sought for his hat.

Reginald Wilfer is a name with rather a grand sound, suggesting on first acquaintance brasses in country churches, scrolls in stained-glass windows, and generally the De Wilfers who came over with the Conqueror.

For, it is a remarkable fact in genealogy that no De Anyones ever came over with Anybody else.

But, the Reginald Wilfer family were of such commonplace extraction and pursuits that their forefathers had for generations modestly subsisted on the Docks, the Excise Office, and the Custom House, and the existing R. Wilfer was a poor clerk.

Skirting the border of this desert, by the way he took, when the light of its kiln-fires made lurid smears on the fog, R. Wilfer sighed and shook his head.

“Ah me!” said he, “what might have been is not what is!”

With which commentary on human life, indicating an experience of it not exclusively his own, he made the best of his way to the end of his journey.

Assuredly, this stall of Silas Wegg’s was the hardest little stall of all the sterile little stalls in London.

It gave you the face-ache to look at his apples, the stomachache to look at his oranges, the toothache to look at his nuts.

Of the latter commodity he had always a grim little heap, on which lay a little wooden measure which had no discernible inside, and was considered to represent the penn’orth appointed by Magna Charta.

Whether from too much east wind or no—it was an easterly corner—the stall, the stock, and the keeper, were all as dry as the desert.

Wegg was a knotty man, and a close-grained, with a face carved out of very hard material, that had just as much play of expression as a watchman’s rattle.

When he laughed, certain jerks occurred in it, and the rattle sprung.

“No, Miss Potterson; because, you see, the law—”

“I am the law here, my man,” returned Miss Abbey, “and I’ll soon convince you of that, if you doubt it at all.”

“I never said I did doubt it at all, Miss Abbey.”

“

Never was an obstinate person yet, who would own to the word!

” remarked Miss Potterson, rubbing her vexed nose; “I’m sure I would, if I was obstinate; but I am a pepperer, which is different. Lizzie Hexam, Lizzie Hexam, think again. Do you know the worst of your father?”

“How was I to know I’d got it? You giv it me. I don’t want none of your teeth; I’ve got enough of my own.” So the boy pipes, as he selects it from his change, and throws it on the counter.

“Don’t sauce me, in the wicious pride of your youth,” Mr. Venus retorts pathetically.

“Don’t hit me because you see I’m down. I’m low enough without that. It dropped into the till, I suppose. They drop into everything. There was two in the coffeepot at breakfast time. Molars.”

“Never was so well in. Mr. Wegg,

I’m not only first in the trade, but I’m the trade.

You may go and buy a skeleton at the West End if you like, and pay the West End price, but it’ll be my putting together.

“Well! I don’t quite see it,” retorted Mr. Boffin, still perplexed. “That’s not satisfactory, you know, what you’re a-saying.”

“Is anything satisfactory, Mr. Boffin?” asked Mortimer, raising his eyebrows.

“I used to find it so,” answered Mr. Boffin, with a wistful look. “While I was foreman at the Bower—afore it was the Bower—I considered the business very satisfactory.

O shelter the poor child!’—till in course of years it gently wore out, as many things do.”

“My dear Mr. Boffin, everything wears to rags,” said Mortimer, with a light laugh.

“I won’t go so far as to say everything,” returned Mr. Boffin, on whom his manner seemed to grate, “because there’s some things that I never found among the dust. Well, sir. So Mrs.

And are human labourers to have no holidays, because of the bees? And am I never to have change of air, because the bees don’t?

Mr. Boffin, I think honey excellent at breakfast; but, regarded in the light of my conventional schoolmaster and moralist, I protest against the tyrannical humbug of your friend the bee.

With the highest respect for you.”

And isn’t it pleasant to know that the good will be done with the poor sad child’s own money?”

“Yes; and it’s pleasant to know that you are Mrs. Boffin,” said her husband, “and it’s been a pleasant thing to know this many and many a year!”

It was ruin to Mrs. Boffin’s aspirations, but, having so spoken, they sat side by side, a hopelessly unfashionable pair.

In its own despite, in a constant conflict with itself and them, it had done so. And this is the eternal law.

For, Evil often stops short at itself and dies with the doer of it; but Good, never.

Through his most inveterate purposes, the dead Jailer of Harmony Jail had known these two faithful servants to be honest and true.

Mr. Milvey smiled again, as he remarked to himself

“Those kings and queens were always wishing for children.”

It occurring to him, perhaps, that if they had been curates, their wishes might have tended in the opposite direction.

Have no antecedents, no established character, no cultivation, no ideas, no manners; have shares. Have shares enough to be on Boards of Direction in capital letters, oscillate on mysterious business between London and Paris, and be great.

Where does he come from? Shares. Where is he going to? Shares. What are his tastes? Shares. Has he any principles? Shares.

What squeezes him into Parliament? Shares. Perhaps he never of himself achieved success in anything, never originated anything, never produced anything? Sufficient answer to all; Shares. O mighty shares!

Mr. Lammle stops, releases his whiskers, and looks at her. “The what?”

Mrs. Lammle haughtily replies, without stopping, and without looking back. “The meanness.”

He is at her side again in a pace or two, and he retorts, “That is not what you said. You said disingenuousness.”

“We come smoothly to thirdly. You have called me an adventurer, Sophronia. So I am. In plain uncomplimentary English, so I am.

So are you, my dear. So are many people.

We agree to keep our own secret, and to work together in furtherance of our own schemes.”

Mr. Podsnap was well to do, and stood very high in Mr. Podsnap’s opinion.

Beginning with a good inheritance, he had married a good inheritance, and had thriven exceedingly in the Marine Insurance way, and was quite satisfied.

There was a dignified conclusiveness—not to add a grand convenience—in this way of getting rid of disagreeables which had done much towards establishing Mr. Podsnap in his lofty place in Mr. Podsnap’s satisfaction.

“I don’t want to know about it; I don’t choose to discuss it; I don’t admit it!”

Mr. Podsnap had even acquired a peculiar flourish of his right arm in often clearing the world of its most difficult problems, by sweeping them behind him (and consequently sheer away) with those words and a flushed face. For they affronted him.

Mr. Podsnap had even acquired a peculiar flourish of his right arm in often clearing the world of its most difficult problems, by sweeping them behind him (and consequently sheer away) with those words and a flushed face. For they affronted him.

Mr. Podsnap’s world was not a very large world, morally; no, nor even geographically:

seeing that although his business was sustained upon commerce with other countries, he considered other countries, with that important reservation, a mistake, and of their manners and customs would conclusively observe, “Not English!” when, presto!

Podsnap was sensible of its being required of him to take Providence under his protection. Consequently he always knew exactly what Providence meant. Inferior and less respectable men might fall short of that mark, but Mr. Podsnap was always up to it.

And it was very remarkable (and must have been very comfortable) that what Providence meant, was invariably what Mr. Podsnap meant.

These may be said to have been the articles of a faith and school which the present chapter takes the liberty of calling, after its representative man, Podsnappery. They were confined within close bounds, as Mr. Podsnap’s own head was confined by his shirt-collar;

The meek man was afraid we must take it as proved, because there were the inquests and the Registrar’s returns.

“Then it was their own fault,” said Mr. Podsnap.

Veneering and other elders of tribes commended this way out of it. At once a shortcut and a broad road.

It was not summer yet, but spring; and it was not gentle spring ethereally mild, as in Thomson’s Seasons, but nipping spring with an easterly wind, as in Johnson’s, Jackson’s, Dickson’s, Smith’s, and Jones’s Seasons.

The grating wind sawed rather than blew; and as it sawed, the sawdust whirled about the sawpit.

Every street was a sawpit, and there were no top-sawyers; every passenger was an under-sawyer, with the sawdust blinding him and choking him.

When the spring evenings are too long and light to shut out, and such weather is rife, the city which Mr. Podsnap so explanatorily called London, Londres, London, is at its worst.

Such a black shrill city, combining the qualities of a smoky house and a scolding wife; such a gritty city; such a hopeless city, with no rent in the leaden canopy of its sky;

such a beleaguered city, invested by the great Marsh Forces of Essex and Kent. So the two old schoolfellows felt it to be, as, their dinner done, they turned towards the fire to smoke.

“But you are not a consistent fellow, Eugene.”

“In susceptibility to boredom,” returned that worthy, “I assure you I am the most consistent of mankind.”

“Why, it was but now that you were dwelling in the advantages of a monotony of two.”

“You hear Eugene?” said Lightwood, over his shoulder. “You are deeply interested in lime.”

“Without lime,” returned that unmoved barrister-at-law, “my existence would be unilluminated by a ray of hope.”

As she reentered at the door, he dropped over the bank and made his way back, among the ooze and near the hiding-place, to Mortimer Lightwood: to whom he told what he had seen of the girl, and how this was becoming very grim indeed.

“If the real man feels as guilty as I do,” said Eugene, “he is remarkably uncomfortable.”

“Influence of secrecy,” suggested Lightwood.

“Eugene,” Mortimer apostrophized him, laughing quite heartily when they were alone again, “how can you be so ridiculous?”

“I am in a ridiculous humour,” quoth Eugene; “I am a ridiculous fellow. Everything is ridiculous. Come along!”

It passed into Mortimer Lightwood’s mind that a change of some sort, best expressed perhaps as an intensification of all that was wildest and most negligent and reckless in his friend, had come upon him in the last half-hour or so.

(

“With a morbid expectation,” murmured Eugene to Lightwood, “that somebody is always going to tell him the truth.”

)

which blurred his nose and forehead.

It is curious to consider, in such a case as Mr. Boffin’s, what a cheap article ink is, and how far it may be made to go.

As a grain of musk will scent a drawer for many years, and still lose nothing appreciable of its original weight, so a halfpennyworth of ink would blot Mr.

“Dislike the mention of it?” answered the old woman. “

Kill me sooner than take me there.

Throw this pretty child under carthorses’ feet and a loaded wagon, sooner than take him there.

A considerable capital of knee and elbow and wrist and ankle, had Sloppy, and he didn’t know how to dispose of it to the best advantage, but was always investing it in wrong securities, and so getting himself into embarrassed circumstances.

Full-Private Number One in the Awkward Squad of the rank and file of life, was Sloppy, and yet had his glimmering notions of standing true to the Colours.

“And now,” said Mrs. Boffin, “concerning Johnny.”

This alarming note of something wrong instantly terrified Toddles and Poddles, who were no sooner heard to roar surprisingly, than Johnny, curving himself the wrong way and striking out at Mrs. Boffin with a pair of indifferent shoes, became a prey to despair.

The absurdity of the situation put its pathos to the rout.

Mrs. Betty Higden was herself in a moment, and brought them all to order with that speed, that Sloppy, stopping short in a polysyllabic bellow, transferred his energy to the mangle, and had taken several penitential turns before he could be stopped.

Oh! I know their tricks and their manners!” Shaking the little fist as before. “And that’s not all. Ever so often calling names in through a person’s keyhole, and imitating a person’s back and legs. Oh!

I know their tricks and their manners.

And I’ll tell you what I’d do, to punish ’em. There’s doors under the church in the Square—black doors, leading into black vaults. Well!

“Why are you?” asked the sharp Miss Wren.

“Because, my dear,” said the airy Eugene, “I am a bad idle dog.”

“Then why don’t you reform and be a good dog?” inquired Miss Wren.

“But you have not imparted to me,” remarks Veneering, “what you think of my entering the House of Commons?”

“I think,” rejoins Twemlow, feelingly, “that it is the best club in London.”

Veneering again blesses him, plunges downstairs, rushes into his Hansom, and directs the driver to be up and at the British Public, and to charge into the City.

Fledgeby deserved Mr. Alfred Lammle’s eulogium. He was the meanest cur existing, with a single pair of legs.

And instinct (a word we all clearly understand) going largely on four legs, and reason always on two, meanness on four legs never attains the perfection of meanness on two.

but there is no animal so sure to get laden with it, as the ass who sees nothing written on the face of the earth and sky but the three letters L.S.D.—not Luxury, Sensuality, Dissoluteness, which they often stand for, but the three dry letters.

Your concentrated fox is seldom comparable to your concentrated ass in money-breeding.

Fascination Fledgeby feigned to be a young gentleman living on his means, but was known secretly to be a kind of outlaw in the bill-broking line, and to put money out at high interest in various ways. His circle of familiar acquaintance, from Mr.

As he mounted, the call or song began to sound in his ears again, and, looking above, he saw the face of the little creature looking down out of a glory of her long bright radiant hair, and musically repeating to him, like a vision:

“Come up and be dead! Come up and be dead!”

“True,” interposed Eugene, striking sharply and cutting him short at his mistake, “it does not concern me at all to know.

I can say Schoolmaster, which is a most respectable title. You are right, Schoolmaster.

”

“A curious monomaniac,” said Eugene. “

The man seems to believe that everybody was acquainted with his mother!

”

“My dear fellow, I don’t design anything. I have no design whatever.

I am incapable of designs. If I conceived a design, I should speedily abandon it, exhausted by the operation.

”

“Ma,” Miss Lavinia interposed, “there can be no objection to your being aggravating, because Bella richly deserves it; but I really must request that you will not drag in such ridiculous nonsense as my having grown when I am past the growing age.”

“I grew, myself,” Mrs. Wilfer sternly proclaimed, “after I was married.”

“Very well, Ma,” returned Lavvy, “then I think you had much better have left it alone.”

“Impertinent girl! Minx!” said Mrs. Wilfer, with dread severity.

“I don’t care whether I am a Minx, or a Sphinx,” returned Lavinia, coolly, tossing her head; “it’s exactly the same thing to me, and I’d every bit as soon be one as the other; but I know this⁠—I’ll not grow after I’m married!”

“You will not? You will not?” repeated Mrs. Wilfer, solemnly.

With a weary and yet a pleased smile, and with an action as if he stretched his little figure out to rest, the child heaved his body on the sustaining arm, and seeking Rokesmith’s face with his lips, said:

“A kiss for the boofer lady.”

Having now bequeathed all he had to dispose of, and arranged his affairs in this world, Johnny, thus speaking, left it.

“A kiss for the boofer lady.”

Having now bequeathed all he had to dispose of, and arranged his affairs in this world, Johnny, thus speaking, left it.

Little Miss Peecher, from her little official dwelling-house, with its little windows like the eyes in needles, and its little doors like the covers of schoolbooks, was very observant indeed of the object of her quiet affections.

Love, though said to be afflicted with blindness, is a vigilant watchman, and Miss Peecher kept him on double duty over Mr. Bradley Headstone.

It was not that she was naturally given to playing the spy—it was not that she was at all secret, plotting, or mean—it was simply that she loved the irresponsive Bradley with all the primitive and homely stock of love that had never been examined …

Why christened Pleasant, the late Mrs. Riderhood might possibly have been at some time able to explain, and possibly not. Her daughter had no information on that point.

Pleasant she found herself, and she couldn’t help it.

She had not been consulted on the question, any more than on the question of her coming into these terrestrial parts, to want a name.

which little personage was not in the least wanted by anybody, and would be shoved and banged out of everybody’s way, until it should grow big enough to shove and bang.

Show her a funeral, and she saw an unremunerative ceremony in the nature of a black masquerade, conferring a temporary gentility on the performers, at an immense expense, and representing the only formal party ever given by the deceased.

Show her a live father, and she saw but a duplicate of her own father, who from her infancy had been taken with fits and starts of discharging his duty to her, which duty was always incorporated in the form of a fist or a …

and still the Sexton Rokesmith accumulated mountains over him, lightening his labour with the dirge,

“Cover him, crush him, keep him down!”

“Are you thankful for not being young?”

“Yes, sir. If I was young, it would all have to be gone through again, and the end would be a weary way off, don’t you see? But never mind me; ’tis concerning Sloppy.”

“And what about him, Betty?”

“No, no, no; not the letter,” said Mr. Boffin; “the idea. Are you sure you’re strong enough to carry out the idea?”

“I shall be stronger, and keep the deadness off better, this way, than any way left open to me, sir.”

“Don’t say than any way left open, you know,” urged Mr. Boffin; “because there are ways without end. A housekeeper would be acceptable over yonder at the Bower, for instance.

And Bradley thought again, “Except your sister, perhaps.”

A grey dusty withered evening in London city has not a hopeful aspect.

The closed warehouses and offices have an air of death about them, and the national dread of colour has an air of mourning.

Being something too soon in their arrival, they lurked at a corner, waiting for her to appear.

The best-looking among us will not look very well, lurking at a corner, and Bradley came out of that disadvantage very poorly indeed.

“Here she comes, Mr. Headstone! Let us go forward and meet her.”

“No! It would not have been voluntary on my part, any more than it is voluntary in me to be here now. You draw me to you.

If I were shut up in a strong prison, you would draw me out.

I should break through the wall to come to you. If I were lying on a sick bed, you would draw me up—to stagger to your feet and fall there.”

“

No man knows till the time comes, what depths are within him.

To some men it never comes; let them rest and be thankful! To me, you brought it; on me, you forced it; and the bottom of this raging sea,” striking himself upon the breast, “has been heaved up ever since.”

It was a foggy day in London, and the fog was heavy and dark.

Animate London, with smarting eyes and irritated lungs, was blinking, wheezing, and choking; inanimate London was a sooty spectre, divided in purpose between being visible and invisible, and so being wholly neither.

Gaslights flared in the shops with a haggard and unblest air, as knowing themselves to be night-creatures that had no business abroad under the sun;

We’ll both jump up into the coach and six and go to Lizzie. This reminds me, godmother, to ask you a serious question. You are as wise as wise can be (having been brought up by the fairies), and you can tell me this:

Is it better to have had a good thing and lost it, or never to have had it?

”

“Ah!” said Miss Wren thoughtfully, by no means convinced, and chopping the exclamation with that sharp little hatchet of hers; “then I tell you what change I think you had better begin with, godmother.

You had better change Is into Was and Was into Is, and keep them so.

”

“I can believe that,” said Miss Abbey, with a softening glance at the little creature.

“And if it’s proud to have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts,” Miss Jenny struck in, flushed, “she is proud. And if it’s not, she is not.”

Her set purpose of contradicting Miss Abbey point blank, was so far from offending that dread authority, as to elicit a gracious smile. “You do right, child,” said Miss Abbey, “to speak well of those who deserve well of you.”

Not that these celebrations ever resulted in anything particularly agreeable, or that the family was ever disappointed by that circumstance on account of having looked forward to the return of the auspicious day with sanguine anticipations of enjoyment.

It was kept morally, rather as a fast than a feast

, enabling Mrs. Wilfer to hold a sombre darkling state, which exhibited that impressive woman in her choicest colours.

“They ought to be,” said Bella.

“Yes, I am aware they ought to be, my dear,” rejoined her father, “but they⁠—ain’t.”

So, the gridiron was put in requisition, and the good-tempered cherub, who was often as un-cherubically employed in his own family as if he had been in the employment of some of the Old Masters, undertook to grill the fowls.

“I thought, my dear, that perhaps your face might—”

“My face might be a martyrdom, but what would that import, or who should know it, if I smiled?”

And she did smile; manifestly freezing the blood of Mr. George Sampson by so doing.

“I have hoped and trusted not too, Pa; but every day he changes for the worse and for the worse. Not to me—he is always much the same to me—but to others about him. Before my eyes he grows suspicious, capricious, hard, tyrannical, unjust.

If ever a good man were ruined by good fortune, it is my benefactor.

And yet, Pa, think how terrible the fascination of money is! I see this, and hate this, and dread this, and don’t know but that money might make a much worse change in me.

“Because I never was, when I was poor,” said Mr. Boffin. “

Poverty and pride don’t go at all well together.

Mind that. How can they go well together? Why it stands to reason. A man, being poor, has nothing to be proud of. It’s nonsense.”

“Then we put the figure,” said Mr. Boffin, “at two hundred a year. Then the figure’s disposed of. Now, there must be no misunderstanding regarding what I buy for two hundred a year.

If I pay for a sheep, I buy it out and out. Similarly, if I pay for a secretary, I buy him out and out.

”

“

Our old selves wouldn’t do here, old lady.

Haven’t you found that out yet? Our old selves would be fit for nothing here but to be robbed and imposed upon. Our old selves weren’t people of fortune; our new selves are; it’s a great difference.”

A kind of illegibility, though a different kind, stole over Mr. Boffin’s face. Its old simplicity of expression got masked by a certain craftiness that assimilated even his good-humour to itself.

His very smile was cunning, as if he had been studying smiles among the portraits of his misers.

Saving an occasional burst of impatience, or coarse assertion of his mastery, his good-humour remained to him, but it had now a sordid alloy of distrust;

“Good night,” he said, after having sunk into a moody silence, with his hands clasped behind him, and his eyes suspiciously wandering about Wegg.—“No! stop there. I know the way out, and I want no light.”

Avarice, and the evening’s legends of avarice, and the inflammatory effect of what he had seen, and perhaps the rush of his ill-conditioned blood to his brain in his descent, wrought Silas Wegg to such a pitch of insatiable appetite

, that when the door closed he made a swoop at it and drew Venus along with him.

The poor soul confusedly asked the counter-question where she was?

“I am the Lock,” said the man.

“I am the Deputy Lock, on job, and this is the lock-house. (Lock or Deputy Lock, it’s all one, while the t’other man’s in the hospital.) What’s your parish?”

“Stop a bit,” said the Deputy, striking in between her and the door. “Why are you all of a shake, and what’s your hurry, Missis?”

“Oh, Master, Master,” returned Betty Higden, “I’ve fought against the Parish and fled from it, all my life, and I want to die free of it!”

“I don’t know,” said the Deputy, with deliberation, “as I ought to let you go. I’m a honest man as gets my living by the sweat of my brow, and I may fall into trouble by letting you go.

“Bless ye! Now lift me, my love.”

Lizzie Hexam very softly raised the weather-stained grey head, and lifted her as high as Heaven.

“Oh, but I mean that,” said Bella, raising her eyebrows.

“No one is useless in this world,” retorted the Secretary, “who lightens the burden of it for anyone else.”

“But I assure you I don’t, Mr. Rokesmith,” said Bella, half-crying.

I wish you could make a friend of me, Lizzie. Do you think you could?

I have no more of what they call character, my dear, than a canary-bird, but I know I am trustworthy.

”

“Eugene, I cannot lose sight of that fellow’s face.”

“Odd!” said Eugene with a light laugh, “I can.” And turned over, and fell asleep again.

Yet more was amiss with him than Miss Peecher’s simply arranged little work-box of thoughts, fitted with no gloomy and dark recesses, could hold. For, the state of the man was murderous.

The state of the man was murderous, and he knew it.

More; he irritated it, with a kind of perverse pleasure akin to that which a sick man sometimes has in irritating a wound upon his body.

If great criminals told the truth—which, being great criminals, they do not—they would very rarely tell of their struggles against the crime.

Their struggles are towards it. They buffet with opposing waves, to gain the bloody shore, not to recede from it.

This man perfectly comprehended that he hated his rival with his strongest and worst forces, and that if he tracked him to Lizzie Hexam, his so doing would never serve himself with her, or serve her.

“I mean that the Jew has not yet done what he might have done, and that Fledgeby takes the credit of having got him to hold his hand.”

“Sophronia, I never believe anybody. I never have, my dear, since I believed you. But it looks like it.”

Having given her this backhanded reminder of her mutinous observations to the skeleton, Mr. Lammle rose from table—perhaps, the better to conceal a smile, and a white dint or two about his nose—and took a turn on the carpet and came to the hearthrug.

But there are reasons which make me very delicate of accepting your assistance. I am greatly, greatly, disinclined to profit by it. I don’t deserve it.”

Good childish creature! Condemned to a passage through the world by such narrow little dimly-lighted ways, and picking up so few specks or spots on the road!

“Perhaps,” said Fledgeby, “you may be a little proud of entering on the topic—having been brought up as a gentleman.”

“My good fellow,” retorted Mr. Boffin, “you have my word; and how you can have that, without my honour too, I don’t know.

I’ve sorted a lot of dust in my time, but I never knew the two things go into separate heaps.

”

it comes to this; I must be overbearing with Boffin, or I shall fly into several pieces. I can’t contain myself when I look at him. Every time I see him putting his hand in his pocket, I see him putting it into my pocket.

Every time I hear him jingling his money, I hear him taking liberties with my money.

Flesh and blood can’t bear it. No,” said Mr. Wegg, greatly exasperated, “and I’ll go further. A wooden leg can’t bear it!”

“The alligator, sir?” said Venus.

“No, Venus, no. The Serpent.”

“You’ll have the goodness to notice, Mr. Boffin,” remarked Venus, “that I said nothing to him about my going out of the affair altogether, because I didn’t wish to take you anyways by surprise.

If I was to take advice of my young man, Rokesmith, I should have to buy him out. Sooner or later, of course, he’d drop down upon me, like Wegg.

I was brought into the world to be dropped down upon, it appears to me.

”

“Why, you don’t mean to say, Miss Bella,” the Golden Dustman slowly remonstrated, “that you set up Rokesmith against me?”

“I do!” said Bella. “He is worth a million of you.”

Very pretty she looked, though very angry, as she made herself as tall as she possibly could (which was not extremely tall), and utterly renounced her patron with a lofty toss of her rich brown head.

Very pretty she looked, though very angry, as she made herself as tall as she possibly could (which was not extremely tall), and utterly renounced her patron with a lofty toss of her rich brown head.

“I would rather he thought well of me,” said Bella, “though he swept the street for bread, than that you did, though you splashed the mud upon him from the wheels of a chariot of pure gold.⁠—There!”

“Well I’m sure!” cried Mr. Boffin, staring.

“Whose perch?” asked Bella with great indignation.

“Rumty’s. You see, being rather high and up two steps they call it a perch. And they call me Rumty.”

“How dare they!” exclaimed Bella.

“Yes, Lavvy, I know what I have got on. I was going to tell Ma when you interrupted. I have left Mr. Boffin’s house for good, Ma, and I have come home again.”

Mrs. Wilfer spake no word, but, having glared at her offspring for a minute or two in an awful silence, retired into her corner of state backward, and sat down: like a frozen article on sale in a Russian market.

“In short, dear Ma,” said Bella, taking off the depreciated bonnet and shaking out her hair, “I have had a very serious difference with Mr.

What the little fair man is expected to do, sir, is to look forward to it also, by saying to himself when he is in danger of being over-worried, ‘I see land at last!’

“I see land at last!”

repeated her father.

I abhor the subject. It is an odious subject, an offensive subject, a subject that makes me sick, and I—” And with his favourite right-arm flourish which sweeps away everything and settles it forever,

Mr. Podsnap sweeps these inconveniently unexplainable wretches who have lived beyond their means and gone to total smash, off the face of the universe.

Eugene, leaning back in his chair, is observing Mr. Podsnap with an irreverent face, and may be about to offer a new suggestion, when the Analytical is beheld in collision with the Coachman;

The voice of the falling water, like the voices of the sea and the wind, were as an outer memory to a contemplative listener; but not particularly so to Mr. Riderhood, who sat on one of the blunt wooden levers of his lock-gates, dozing.

Wine must be got into a butt by some agency before it can be drawn out; and the wine of sentiment never having been got into Mr. Riderhood by any agency, nothing in nature tapped him.

As the Rogue sat, ever and again nodding himself off his balance, his recovery was always attended by an angry stare and growl, as if, in the absence of anyone else, he had aggressive inclinations towards himself.

… Archbishop perpetually obstructed, cutting him out with his elbow in the moment of success, despatching him in degrading quest of melted butter, and, when by any chance he got hold of any dish worth having, bereaving him of it, and ordering him to stand back.

“Pray excuse him, madam,” said the Archbishop in a low stately voice; “he is a very young man on liking, and we don’t like him.”

This induced John Rokesmith to observe—by way of making the thing more natural—“Bella, my love, this is so much more successful than any of our past anniversaries, that I think we must keep our future anniversaries here.”

With that, he solemnly bowed and retired, and they all burst into laughter, long and merry.

“Disguise is of no use,” said Bella; “they all find me out; I think it must be, Pa and John dear, because I look so happy!”

Her husband feeling it necessary at this point to demand one of those mysterious disappearances on Bella’s part, she dutifully obeyed; saying in a softened voice from her place of concealment:

“Oh, Pa! Not at all?”

“No, my dear. How can we tell what coming people are aboard the ships that may be sailing to us now from the unknown seas!”

Bella remaining invisible and silent, her father remained at his dessert and wine, until he remembered it was time for him to get home to Holloway.

So, she leaning on her husband’s arm, they turned homeward by a rosy path which the gracious sun struck out for them in its setting.

And O there are days in this life, worth life and worth death.

And O what a bright old song it is, that O ’tis love, ’tis love, ’tis love that makes the world go round!

And this is another spell against which the shedder of blood forever strives in vain.

There are fifty doors by which discovery may enter. With infinite pains and cunning, he double locks and bars forty-nine of them, and cannot see the fiftieth standing wide open.

Now, too, was he cursed with a state of mind more wearing and more wearisome than remorse. He had no remorse;

“They must find it rather dull and dark, Miss Peecher, for the parlour blind’s down, and neither of them pulls it up.”

“There is no accounting,” said good Miss Peecher with a little sad sigh which she repressed by laying her hand on her neat methodical boddice, “there is no accounting for tastes, Mary Anne.”

Charley, entering the dark room, stopped short when he saw his old friend in its yellow shade.

He spoke as confidently, and with as entire an absence of any telltale colour in his cheek, as if there were no softening old time behind him. Not wonderful, for there was none in his hollow empty heart.

What is there but self, for selfishness to see behind it?

“When I speak of my sister, I devoutly wish that you had never seen her, Mr. Headstone. However, you did see her, and that’s useless now. I confided in you about her.

“Yes,” said Miss Jenny, with a silent chuckle. “

It looks as if it ought to be pickled.

”

“I think,” said Miss Jenny with a silent laugh, “he ought to have a little pepper? Just a few grains?

I think the young man’s tricks and manners make a claim upon his friends for a little pepper?

”

“I must have a very short cry, godmother, before I cheer up for good,” said the little creature, coming in.

“Because after all a child is a child, you know.”

It was a longer cry than might have been expected. Howbeit, it wore itself out in a shadowy corner, and then the dressmaker came forth, and washed her face, and made the tea.

“Her innocent reputation would be ruined, my friend. She would be punished, not he. I have wronged her enough in fact; I have wronged her still more in intention. You recollect what pavement is said to be made of good intentions.

It is made of bad intentions too. Mortimer, I am lying on it, and I know!

”

For certain, however, Mrs. John Rokesmith stitched at them with so dexterous a hand, that she must have taken lessons of somebody.

Love is in all things a most wonderful teacher, and perhaps love (from a pictorial point of view, with nothing on but a thimble), had been teaching this branch of needlework to Mrs. John Rokesmith.

It was near John’s time for coming home, but as Mrs. John was desirous to finish a special triumph of her skill before dinner, she did not go out to meet him.

“Don’t be ashamed of me,” she replied, “and you will have more than paid all.”

“It would require a life, Lizzie, to pay all; more than a life.”

“Live for that, then; live for me, Eugene; live to see how hard I will try to improve myself, and never to discredit you.”

“I never said anything of the sort,” Mr. Boffin declared in a state of the highest enjoyment.

“Then you ought to have said it, sir,” returned Bella, giving him two pulls and one kiss

, “for you must have thought and meant it.