“Revengefully, sir? Is it for him that I have declined and falled, night after night? Is it for his pleasure that I’ve waited at home of an evening, like a set of skittles, to be set up and knocked over, set up and knocked over, by whatever balls — or books — he chose to bring against me? Why, I’m a hundred times the man he is, sir; five hundred times!”
Perhaps it was with the malicious intent of urging him on to his worst that Mr. Venus looked as if he doubted that.
“What? Was it outside the house at present ockypied, to its disgrace, by that minion of fortune and worm of the hour,” said Wegg, falling back upon his strongest terms of reprobation, and slapping the counter, “that I, Silas Wegg, five hundred times the man he ever was, sat in all weathers, waiting for a errand or a customer? Was it outside that very house as I first set eyes upon him, rolling in the lap of luxury, when I was selling halfpenny ballads there for a living? And am I to grovel in the dust for him to walk over? No!”
There was a grin upon the ghastly countenance of the French gentleman under the influence of the firelight, as if he were computing how many thousand slanderers and traitors array themselves against the fortunate, on premises exactly answering to those of Mr. Wegg. One might have fancied that the big-headed babies were toppling over with their hydrocephalic attempts to reckon up the children of men who transform their benefactors into their injurers by the same process. The yard or two of smile on the part of the alligator might have been invested with the meaning, “All about this was quite familiar knowledge down in the depths of the slime, ages ago.”
“But,” said Wegg, possibly with some slight perception to the foregoing effect, “your speaking countenance remarks, Mr. Venus, that I’m duller and savager than usual. Perhaps I have allowed myself to brood too much. Begone, dull Care! ’Tis gone, sir. I’ve looked in upon you, and empire resumes her sway. For, as the song says — subject to your correction, sir —
The mist is dispelled if Venus appears.
Like the notes of a fiddle, you sweetly, sir, sweetly,
Raises our spirits and charms our ears.”
Good-night, sir.”
“I shall have a word or two to say to you, Mr. Wegg, before long,” remarked Venus, “respecting my share in the project we’ve been speaking of.”
“My time, sir,” returned Wegg, “is yours. In the meanwhile let it be fully understood that I shall not neglect bringing the grindstone to bear, nor yet bringing Dusty Boffin’s nose to it. His nose once brought to it, shall be held to it by these hands, Mr. Venus, till the sparks flies out in showers.”
With this agreeable promise Wegg stumped out, and shut the shop-door after him. “Wait till I light a candle, Mr. Boffin,” said Venus, “and you’ll come out more comfortable.” So, he lighting a candle and holding it up at arm’s length, Mr. Boffin disengaged himself from behind the alligator’s smile, with an expression of countenance so very downcast that it not only appeared as if the alligator had the whole of the joke to himself, but further as if it had been conceived and executed at Mr. Boffin’s expense.
“That’s a treacherous fellow,” said Mr. Boffin, dusting his arms and legs as he came forth, the alligator having been but musty company. “That’s a dreadful fellow.”
“The alligator, sir?” said Venus.
“No, Venus, no. The Serpent.”
“You’ll have the goodness to notice, Mr. Boffin,” remarked Venus, “that I said nothing to him about my going out of the affair altogether, because I didn’t wish to take you anyways by surprise. But I can’t be