“Here he is,” said Mr Boffin.
Mr Wegg was going to say, My Benefactor, and had said My Bene, when a grandiloquent change came over him.
“No, Mr Boffin, not you, sir. Anybody but you. Do not fear, Mr Boffin, that I shall contaminate the premises which your gold has bought, with my lowly pursuits. I am aware, sir, that it would not become me to carry on my little traffic under the windows of your mansion. I have already thought of that, and taken my measures. No need to be bought out, sir. Would Stepney Fields be considered intrusive? If not remote enough, I can go remoter. In the words of the poet’s song, which I do not quite remember:
Bereft of my parents, bereft of a home,
A stranger to something and what’s his name joy,
Behold little Edmund the poor Peasant boy.’
— And equally,” said Mr Wegg, repairing the want of direct application in the last line, “behold myself on a similar footing!”
“Now, Wegg, Wegg, Wegg,” remonstrated the excellent Boffin. “You are too sensitive.”
“I know I am, sir,” returned Wegg, with obstinate magnanimity. “I am acquainted with my faults. I always was, from a child, too sensitive.”
“But listen,” pursued the Golden Dustman; “hear me out, Wegg. You have taken it into your head that I mean to pension you off.”
“True, sir,” returned Wegg, still with an obstinate magnanimity. “I am acquainted with my faults. Far be it from me to deny them. I have taken it into my head.”
“But I don’t mean it.”
The assurance seemed hardly as comforting to Mr Wegg, as Mr Boffin intended it to be. Indeed, an appreciable elongation of his visage might have been observed as he replied:
“Don’t you, indeed, sir?”
“No,” pursued Mr Boffin; “because that would express, as I understand it, that you were not going to do anything to deserve your money. But you are; you are.”
“That, sir,” replied Mr Wegg, cheering up bravely, “is quite another pair of shoes. Now, my independence as a man is again elevated. Now, I no longer
When to Boffinses bower,
The Lord of the valley with offers came;
Neither does the moon hide her light
From the heavens to-night,
And weep behind her clouds o’er any individual in the present
Company’s shame.’
— Please to proceed, Mr Boffin.”
“Thank’ee, Wegg, both for your confidence in me and for your frequent dropping into poetry; both of which is friendly. Well, then; my idea is, that you should give up your stall, and that I should put you into the Bower here, to keep it for us. It’s a pleasant spot; and a man with coals and candles and a pound a week might be in clover here.” “Hem! Would that man, sir — we will say that man, for the purposes of argueyment;” Mr Wegg made a smiling demonstration of great perspicuity here; “would that man, sir, be expected to throw any other capacity in, or would any other capacity be considered extra? Now let us (for the purposes of argueyment) suppose that man to be engaged as a reader: say (for the purposes of argueyment) in the evening. Would that man’s pay as a reader in the evening, be added to the other amount, which, adopting your language, we will call clover; or would it merge into that amount, or clover?”