“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.”

“Ah!” said Mrs. Boffin, pausing in her work again, softly to draw a long breath and to look at the fire. “A great difference.”

“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.”

“Mentioning recollecting,” said Mrs. Boffin, with her work abandoned, her eyes upon the fire, and her chin upon her hand, “do you recollect, Noddy, how you said to Mr. Rokesmith when he first came to see us at the Bower, and you engaged him — how you said to him that if it had pleased Heaven to send John Harmon to his fortune safe, we could have been content with the one Mound which was our legacy, and should never have wanted the rest?”

“Ay, I remember, old lady. But we hadn’t tried what it was to have the rest then. Our new shoes had come home, but we hadn’t put ’em on. We’re wearing ’em now, we’re wearing ’em, and must step out accordingly.”

Mrs. Boffin took up her work again, and plied her needle in silence.

“As to Rokesmith, that young man of mine,” said Mr. Boffin, dropping his voice and glancing towards the door with an apprehension of being overheard by some eavesdropper there, “it’s the same with him as with the footmen. I have found out that you must either scrunch them, or let them scrunch you. If you ain’t imperious with ’em, they won’t believe in your being any better than themselves, if as good, after the stories (lies mostly) that they have heard of your beginnings. There’s nothing betwixt stiffening yourself up, and throwing yourself away; take my word for that, old lady.”

Bella ventured for a moment to look stealthily towards him under her eyelashes, and she saw a dark cloud of suspicion, covetousness, and conceit, overshadowing the once open face.

“Hows’ever,” said he, “this isn’t entertaining to Miss Bella. Is it, Bella?”

A deceiving Bella she was, to look at him with that pensively abstracted air, as if her mind were full of her book, and she had not heard a single word!

“Hah! Better employed than to attend to it,” said Mr. Boffin. “That’s right, that’s right. Especially as you have no call to be told how to value yourself, my dear.”

Colouring a little under this compliment, Bella returned, “I hope sir, you don’t think me vain?”

“Not a bit, my dear,” said Mr. Boffin. “But I think it’s very creditable in you, at your age, to be so well up with the pace of the world, and to know what to go in for. You are right. Go in for money, my love. Money’s the article. You’ll make money of your good looks, and of the money Mrs. Boffin and me will have the pleasure of settling upon you, and you’ll live and die rich. That’s the state to live and die in!” said Mr. Boffin, in an unctuous manner. R—r— rich!”

There was an expression of distress in Mrs. Boffin’s face, as, after watching her husband’s, she turned to their adopted girl, and said: “Don’t mind him, Bella, my dear.”

“Eh?” cried Mr. Boffin. “What! Not mind him?”