The four members of Council looked at one another, and paused. ’Shall he be brought here, ma’am?” asked Rokesmith.
“Yes,” said Mrs Boffin. Whereupon the footman disappeared, reappeared presenting Sloppy, and retired much disgusted.
The consideration of Mrs Boffin had clothed Mr Sloppy in a suit of black, on which the tailor had received personal directions from Rokesmith to expend the utmost cunning of his art, with a view to the concealment of the cohering and sustaining buttons. But, so much more powerful were the frailties of Sloppy’s form than the strongest resources of tailoring science, that he now stood before the Council, a perfect Argus in the way of buttons: shining and winking and gleaming and twinkling out of a hundred of those eyes of bright metal, at the dazzled spectators. The artistic taste of some unknown hatter had furnished him with a hatband of wholesale capacity which was fluted behind, from the crown of his hat to the brim, and terminated in a black bunch, from which the imagination shrunk discomfited and the reason revolted. Some special powers with which his legs were endowed, had already hitched up his glossy trousers at the ankles, and bagged them at the knees; while similar gifts in his arms had raised his coat- sleeves from his wrists and accumulated them at his elbows. Thus set forth, with the additional embellishments of a very little tail to his coat, and a yawning gulf at his waistband, Sloppy stood confessed.
“And how is Betty, my good fellow?” Mrs Boffin asked him.
“Thankee, mum,” said Sloppy, “she do pretty nicely, and sending her dooty and many thanks for the tea and all faviours and wishing to know the family’s healths.”
“Have you just come, Sloppy?”
“Yes, mum.”
“Then you have not had your dinner yet?”
“No, mum. But I mean to it. For I ain’t forgotten your handsome orders that I was never to go away without having had a good ’un off of meat and beer and pudding — no: there was four of ’em, for I reckoned ’em up when I had ’em; meat one, beer two, vegetables three, and which was four? — Why, pudding, he was four!” Here Sloppy threw his head back, opened his mouth wide, and laughed rapturously.
“How are the two poor little Minders?” asked Mrs Boffin.
“Striking right out, mum, and coming round beautiful.”
Mrs Boffin looked on the other three members of Council, and then said, beckoning with her finger:
“Sloppy.”
“Yes, mum.”
“Come forward, Sloppy. Should you like to dine here every day?”
“Off of all four on “em, mum? O mum!” Sloppy’s feelings obliged him to squeeze his hat, and contract one leg at the knee.
“Yes. And should you like to be always taken care of here, if you were industrious and deserving?”
“Oh, mum! — But there’s Mrs Higden,” said Sloppy, checking himself in his raptures, drawing back, and shaking his head with very serious meaning. “There’s Mrs Higden. Mrs Higden goes before all. None can ever be better friends to me than Mrs Higden’s been. And she must be turned for, must Mrs Higden.