“No information to give, for a reward?”
“No, sir.”
There may have been a momentary mantling in the face of the man as he made the last answer, but it passed directly.
“If I don’t mistake, you have followed me from my lawyer’s and tried to fix my attention. Say out! Have you? Or haven’t you?” demanded Mr Boffin, rather angry.
“Yes.”
“Why have you?”
“If you will allow me to walk beside you, Mr Boffin, I will tell you. Would you object to turn aside into this place — I think it is called Clifford’s Inn — where we can hear one another better than in the roaring street?”
(“Now,” thought Mr Boffin, “if he proposes a game at skittles, or meets a country gentleman just come into property, or produces any article of jewellery he has found, I’ll knock him down!” With this discreet reflection, and carrying his stick in his arms much as Punch carries his, Mr Boffin turned into Clifford’s Inn aforesaid.)
“Mr Boffin, I happened to be in Chancery Lane this morning, when I saw you going along before me. I took the liberty of following you, trying to make up my mind to speak to you, till you went into your lawyer’s. Then I waited outside till you came out.”
(“Don’t quite sound like skittles, nor yet country gentleman, nor yet jewellery,” thought Mr Boffin, “but there’s no knowing.”)
“I am afraid my object is a bold one, I am afraid it has little of the usual practical world about it, but I venture it. If you ask me, or if you ask yourself — which is more likely — what emboldens me, I answer, I have been strongly assured, that you are a man of rectitude and plain dealing, with the soundest of sound hearts, and that you are blessed in a wife distinguished by the same qualities.”
“Your information is true of Mrs Boffin, anyhow,” was Mr Boffin’s answer, as he surveyed his new friend again. There was something repressed in the strange man’s manner, and he walked with his eyes on the ground — though conscious, for all that, of Mr Boffin’s observation — and he spoke in a subdued voice. But his words came easily, and his voice was agreeable in tone, albeit constrained. “When I add, I can discern for myself what the general tongue says of you — that you are quite unspoiled by Fortune, and not uplifted — I trust you will not, as a man of an open nature, suspect that I mean to flatter you, but will believe that all I mean is to excuse myself, these being my only excuses for my present intrusion.”
(“How much?” thought Mr Boffin. “It must be coming to money. How much?”)
“You will probably change your manner of living, Mr Boffin, in your changed circumstances. You will probably keep a larger house, have many matters to arrange, and be beset by numbers of correspondents. If you would try me as your Secretary—”
“As what?” cried Mr Boffin, with his eyes wide open.
“Your Secretary.”
“Well,” said Mr Boffin, under his breath, “that’s a queer thing!”