a scavenger’s cart happening to stand unattended at the corner, with its little ladder planted against the wheel, Mr S. found it impossible to resist the temptation of shooting Mr Silas Wegg into the cart’s contents. A somewhat difficult feat, achieved with great dexterity, and with a prodigious splash.

‘O yes!’ cried Bella, covering her face with her hands; ‘but that I never shall be able to understand as long as I live. It is, how John could love me so when I so little deserved it, and how you, Mr and Mrs Boffin, could be so forgetful of yourselves, and take such pains and trouble, to make me a little better, and after all to help him to so unworthy a wife. But I am very very grateful.’

‘You are stupid enough, I suppose. But if you are clever enough to get through life tolerably to your satisfaction, you have got the better of me, Man as I am, and Mutton as you are!’

‘Hold your tongue, Boffin! Answer when you’re called upon to answer. You’ll find you’ve got quite enough to do. Now, you’re aware—are you—that you’re in possession of property to which you’ve no right at all? Are you aware of that?’

‘I shall never more think well of you,’ cried Bella, cutting him short, with intense defiance in her expressive little eyebrows, and championship of the late Secretary in every dimple. ‘No! Never again! Your money has changed you to marble. You are a hard-hearted Miser. You are worse than Dancer, worse than Hopkins, worse than Blackberry Jones, worse than any of the wretches. And more!’ proceeded Bella, breaking into tears again, ‘you were wholly undeserving of the Gentleman you have lost.’

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

And we must be up to the difference,’ pursued her husband; ‘we must be equal to the change; that’s what we must be. We’ve got to hold our own now, against everybody (for everybody’s hand is stretched out to be dipped into our pockets), and we have got to recollect that money makes money, as well as makes everything else.’

‘If you give those names to my thanking you for your proposal and declining it, is it my fault, Mr Headstone?’ said Lizzie, compassionating the bitter struggle he could not conceal, almost as much as she was repelled and alarmed by it.

‘Your brother’s plans were communicated to me when he first had them in his thoughts. In point of fact he spoke to me about them when I was last here—when we were walking back together, and when I—when the impression was fresh upon me of having seen his sister.’

‘Eugene, do you design to capture and desert this girl?’ ‘My dear fellow, no.’ ‘Do you design to marry her?’ ‘My dear fellow, no.’ ‘Do you design to pursue her?’ ‘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.’

‘Well, it’s Saturday night,’ she returned, ‘and my child’s coming home. And my child is a troublesome bad child, and costs me a world of scolding. I would rather you didn’t see my child.’ ‘A doll?’ said Eugene, not understanding, and looking for an explanation. But Lizzie, with her lips only, shaping the two words, ‘Her father,’ he delayed no longer.

‘My time, sir,’ returned Wegg, ‘is yours. In the meanwhile let it be fully understood that I shall not neglect bringing the grindstone to bear, nor yet bringing Dusty Boffin’s nose to it. His nose once brought to it, shall be held to it by these hands, Mr Venus, till the sparks flies out in showers.’

In the sound good feeling and good sense of her entreaty, Miss Abbey had softened into a soothing tone, and had even drawn her arm round the girl’s waist. But, she only replied, ‘Thank you, thank you! I can’t. I won’t. I must not think of it. The harder father is borne upon, the more he needs me to lean on.’

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