“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. Wouldn’t you like to see the Bower, and know a retired literary man of the name of Wegg that lives there — with a wooden leg?”

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 a 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.