Mr. Wegg complied, and the hoarse gentleman invited his attention to the third person in company, thus;
“Now, you look at Eddard’s ears. What was it as you named, agin? Whisper.”
Mr. Wegg whispered, “Boffin’s Bower.”
“Eddard! (keep yer hi on his ears) cut away to Boffin’s Bower!”
Edward, with his ears lying back, remained immoveable.
“Eddard! (keep yer hi on his ears) cut away to Old Harmon’s.” Edward instantly pricked up his ears to their utmost, and rattled off at such a pace that Mr. Wegg’s conversation was jolted out of him in a most dislocated state.
“Was-it-Ev-verajail?” asked Mr. Wegg, holding on.
“Not a proper jail, wot you and me would get committed to,” returned his escort; “they giv’ it the name, on accounts of Old Harmon living solitary there.”
“And-why-did-they-callitharm-Ony?” asked Wegg.
“On accounts of his never agreeing with nobody. Like a speeches of chaff. Harmon’s Jail; Harmony Jail. Working it round like.”
“Doyouknow-Mist-Erboff-in?” asked Wegg.
“I should think so! Everybody do about here. Eddard knows him. (Keep yer hi on his ears.) Noddy Boffin, Eddard!”
The effect of the name was so very alarming, in respect of causing a temporary disappearance of Edward’s head, casting his hind hoofs in the air, greatly accelerating the pace and increasing the jolting, that Mr. Wegg was fain to devote his attention exclusively to holding on, and to relinquish his desire of ascertaining whether this homage to Boffin was to be considered complimentary or the reverse.
Presently, Edward stopped at a gateway, and Wegg discreetly lost no time in slipping out at the back of the truck. The moment he was landed, his late driver with a wave of the carrot, said “Supper, Eddard!” and he, the hind hoofs, the truck, and Edward, all seemed to fly into the air together, in a kind of apotheosis.
Pushing the gate, which stood ajar, Wegg looked into an enclosed space where certain tall dark mounds rose high against the sky, and where the pathway to the Bower was indicated, as the moonlight showed, between two lines of broken crockery set in ashes. A white figure advancing along this path, proved to be nothing more ghostly than Mr. Boffin, easily attired for the pursuit of knowledge, in an undress garment of short white smock-frock. Having received his literary friend with great cordiality, he conducted him to the interior of the Bower and there presented him to Mrs. Boffin:—a stout lady of a rubicund and cheerful aspect, dressed (to Mr. Wegg’s consternation) in a low evening-dress of sable satin, and a large black velvet hat and feathers.
“Mrs. Boffin, Wegg,” said Boffin, “is a highflyer at Fashion. And her make is such, that she does it credit. As to myself I ain’t yet as fash’nable as I may come to be. Henerietty, old lady, this is the gentleman that’s a going to decline and fall off the Rooshan Empire.”
“And I am sure I hope it’ll do you both good,” said Mrs. Boffin.
It was the queerest of rooms, fitted and furnished more like a luxurious amateur taproom than anything else within the ken of Silas Wegg. There were two wooden settles by the fire, one on either side of it, with a corresponding table before each. On one of these tables, the eight volumes were ranged flat, in a row, like a galvanic battery; on the other, certain squat case-bottles of inviting appearance seemed to stand on tiptoe to exchange glances with Mr. Wegg over a front row of tumblers and a basin of white sugar. On the hob, a kettle steamed; on the hearth, a cat reposed. Facing the fire between the settles, a sofa, a footstool, and a little table, formed a centrepiece devoted to Mrs. Boffin. They were garish in taste and colour, but were expensive articles of drawing-room furniture that had a very odd look beside the settles and the flaring gaslight pendent from the ceiling. There was a flowery carpet on the floor; but, instead of reaching to the fireside, its glowing vegetation stopped short at Mrs. Boffin’s footstool, and gave place to a region of sand and sawdust. Mr. Wegg also noticed, with admiring eyes, that, while the flowery land displayed such hollow ornamentation as stuffed birds and waxen fruits under glass-shades, there were, in the territory where vegetation ceased, compensatory shelves on which the best part of a large pie and likewise of a cold joint were plainly discernible among other solids. The room itself was large, though low; and the heavy frames of its old-fashioned windows, and the heavy beams in its crooked ceiling, seemed to indicate that it had once been a house of some mark standing alone in the country.
“Do you like it, Wegg?” asked Mr. Boffin, in his pouncing manner.
“I admire it greatly, sir,” said Wegg. “Peculiar comfort at this fireside, sir.”
“Do you understand it, Wegg?”
“Why, in a general way, sir,” Mr. Wegg was beginning slowly and knowingly, with his head stuck on one side, as evasive people do begin, when the other cut him short:
“You don’t understand it, Wegg, and I’ll explain it. These arrangements is made by mutual consent between Mrs. Boffin and me. Mrs. Boffin, as I’ve mentioned, is a highflyer at Fashion; at present I’m not. I don’t go higher than comfort, and comfort of the sort that I’m equal to the enjoyment of. Well then. Where would be the good of Mrs. Boffin and me quarrelling over it? We never did quarrel, before we come into Boffin’s Bower as a property; why quarrel when we have come into Boffin’s Bower as a property? So Mrs. Boffin, she keeps up her part of the room, in her way; I keep up my part of the room in mine. In consequence of which we have at once, Sociability (I should go melancholy mad without Mrs. Boffin), Fashion, and Comfort. If I get by degrees to be a higher-flyer at Fashion, then
