Silas took his seat in silence on the wooden box before the fire, and Venus dropping into his low chair produced from among his skeleton hands, his tea-tray and teacups, and put the kettle on. Silas inwardly approved of these preparations, trusting they might end in Mr. Venus’s diluting his intellect.
“Now, sir,” said Venus, “all is safe and quiet. Let us see this discovery.”
With still reluctant hands, and not without several glances towards the skeleton hands, as if he mistrusted that a couple of them might spring forth and clutch the document, Wegg opened the hatbox and revealed the cashbox, opened the cashbox and revealed the will. He held a corner of it tight, while Venus, taking hold of another corner, searchingly and attentively read it.
“Was I correct in my account of it, partner?” said Mr. Wegg at length.
“Partner, you were,” said Mr. Venus.
Mr. Wegg thereupon made an easy, graceful movement, as though he would fold it up; but Mr. Venus held on by his corner.
“No, sir,” said Mr. Venus, winking his weak eyes and shaking his head. “No, partner. The question is now brought up, who is going to take care of this. Do you know who is going to take care of this, partner?”
“I am,” said Wegg.
“Oh dear no, partner,” retorted Venus. “That’s a mistake. I am. Now look here, Mr. Wegg. I don’t want to have any words with you, and still less do I want to have any anatomical pursuits with you.”
“What do you mean?” said Wegg, quickly.
“I mean, partner,” replied Venus, slowly, “that it’s hardly possible for a man to feel in a more amiable state towards another man than I do towards you at this present moment. But I am on my own ground, I am surrounded by the trophies of my art, and my tools is very handy.”
“What do you mean, Mr. Venus?” asked Wegg again.
“I am surrounded, as I have observed,” said Mr. Venus, placidly, “by the trophies of my art. They are numerous, my stock of human warious is large, the shop is pretty well crammed, and I don’t just now want any more trophies of my art. But I like my art, and I know how to exercise my art.”
“No man better,” assented Mr. Wegg, with a somewhat staggered air.
“There’s the miscellanies of several human specimens,” said Venus, “(though you mightn’t think it) in the box on which you’re sitting. There’s the miscellanies of several human specimens, in the lovely compo-one behind the door”; with a nod towards the French gentleman. “It still wants a pair of arms. I don’t say that I’m in any hurry for ’em.”
“You must be wandering in your mind, partner,” Silas remonstrated.
“You’ll excuse me if I wander,” returned Venus; “I am sometimes rather subject to it. I like my art, and I know how to exercise my art, and I mean to have the keeping of this document.”
“But what has that got to do with your art, partner?” asked Wegg, in an insinuating tone.
Mr. Venus winked his chronically-fatigued eyes both at once, and adjusting the kettle on the fire, remarked to himself, in a hollow voice, “She’ll bile in a couple of minutes.”
Silas Wegg glanced at the kettle, glanced at the shelves, glanced at the French gentleman behind the door, and shrank a little as he glanced at Mr. Venus winking his red eyes, and feeling in his waistcoat pocket—as for a lancet, say—with his unoccupied hand. He and Venus were necessarily seated close together, as each held a corner of the document, which was but a common sheet of paper.
“Partner,” said Wegg, even more insinuatingly than before, “I propose that we cut it in half, and each keep a half.”
Venus shook his shock of hair, as he replied, “It wouldn’t do to mutilate it, partner. It might seem to be cancelled.”
“Partner,” said Wegg, after a silence, during which they had contemplated one another, “don’t your speaking countenance say that you’re a-going to suggest a middle course?”
Venus shook his shock of hair as he replied, “Partner, you have kept this paper from me once. You shall never keep it from me again. I offer you the box and the label to take care of, but I’ll take care of the paper.”
Silas hesitated a little longer, and then suddenly releasing his corner, and resuming his buoyant and benignant tone, exclaimed, “What’s life without trustfulness! What’s a fellow-man without honour! You’re welcome to it, partner, in a spirit of trust and confidence.”
Continuing to wink his red eyes both together—but in a self-communing way, and without any show of triumph—Mr. Venus folded the paper now left in his hand, and locked it in a drawer behind him, and pocketed the key. He then proposed “A cup of tea, partner?” To which Mr. Wegg returned, “Thank’ee, partner,” and the tea was made and poured out.
“Next,” said Venus, blowing at his tea in his saucer, and looking over it at his confidential friend, “comes the question, What’s the course to be pursued?”
On this head, Silas Wegg had much to say. Silas had to say that, he would beg to remind his comrade, brother, and partner, of the impressive passages they had read that evening; of the evident parallel in Mr. Boffin’s mind between them and the late owner of the Bower, and the present circumstances of the Bower; of the bottle; and of the box. That, the fortunes of his brother and comrade, and of
