Mrs. Boffin who, perpetually smiling, had approached and drawn her plump arm through her lord’s, most willingly complied. Fashion, in the form of her black velvet hat and feathers, tried to prevent it; but got deservedly crushed in the endeavour.
“So now, Wegg,” said Mr. Boffin, wiping his mouth with an air of much refreshment, “you begin to know us as we are. This is a charming spot, is the Bower, but you must get to apprechiate it by degrees. It’s a spot to find out the merits of; little by little, and a new’un every day. There’s a serpentining walk up each of the mounds, that gives you the yard and neighbourhood changing every moment. When you get to the top, there’s a view of the neighbouring premises, not to be surpassed. The premises of Mrs. Boffin’s late father (Canine Provision Trade), you look down into, as if they was your own. And the top of the High Mound is crowned with a latticework arbour, in which, if you don’t read out loud many a book in the summer, ay, and as a friend, drop many a time into poetry too, it shan’t be my fault. Now, what’ll you read on?”
“Thank you, sir,” returned Wegg, as if there were nothing new in his reading at all. “I generally do it on gin and water.”
“Keeps the organ moist, does it, Wegg?” asked Mr. Boffin, with innocent eagerness.
“N-no, sir,” replied Wegg, coolly, “I should hardly describe it so, sir. I should say, mellers it. Mellers it, is the word I should employ, Mr. Boffin.”
His wooden conceit and craft kept exact pace with the delighted expectation of his victim. The visions rising before his mercenary mind, of the many ways in which this connection was to be turned to account, never obscured the foremost idea natural to a dull overreaching man, that he must not make himself too cheap.
Mrs. Boffin’s Fashion, as a less inexorable deity than the idol usually worshipped under that name, did not forbid her mixing for her literary guest, or asking if he found the result to his liking. On his returning a gracious answer and taking his place at the literary settle, Mr. Boffin began to compose himself as a listener, at the opposite settle, with exultant eyes.
“Sorry to deprive you of a pipe, Wegg,” he said, filling his own, “but you can’t do both together. Oh! and another thing I forgot to name! When you come in here of an evening, and look round you, and notice anything on a shelf that happens to catch your fancy, mention it.”
Wegg, who had been going to put on his spectacles, immediately laid them down, with the sprightly observation:
“You read my thoughts, sir. Do my eyes deceive me, or is that object up there a—a pie? It can’t be a pie.”
“Yes, it’s a pie, Wegg,” replied Mr. Boffin, with a glance of some little discomfiture at the Decline and Fall.
“Have I lost my smell for fruits, or is it a apple pie, sir?” asked Wegg.
“It’s a veal and ham pie,” said Mr. Boffin.
“Is it indeed, sir? And it would be hard, sir, to name the pie that is a better pie than a weal and hammer,” said Mr. Wegg, nodding his head emotionally.
“Have some, Wegg?”
“Thank you, Mr. Boffin, I think I will, at your invitation. I wouldn’t at any other party’s, at the present juncture; but at yours, sir!—And meaty jelly too, especially when a little salt, which is the case where there’s ham, is mellering to the organ, is very mellering to the organ.” Mr. Wegg did not say what organ, but spoke with a cheerful generality.
So, the pie was brought down, and the worthy Mr. Boffin exercised his patience until Wegg, in the exercise of his knife and fork, had finished the dish: only profiting by the opportunity to inform Wegg that although it was not strictly fashionable to keep the contents of a larder thus exposed to view, he (Mr. Boffin) considered it hospitable; for the reason, that instead of saying, in a comparatively unmeaning manner, to a visitor, “There are such and such edibles downstairs; will you have anything up?” you took the bold practical course of saying, “Cast your eye along the shelves, and, if you see anything you like there, have it down.”
And now, Mr. Wegg at length pushed away his plate and put on his spectacles, and Mr. Boffin lighted his pipe and looked with beaming eyes into the opening world before him, and Mrs. Boffin reclined in a fashionable manner on her sofa: as one who would be part of the audience if she found she could, and would go to sleep if she found she couldn’t.
“Hem!” began Wegg, “This, Mr. Boffin and Lady, is the first chapter of the first wollume of the Decline and Fall off—” here he looked hard at the book, and stopped.
“What’s the matter, Wegg?”
“Why, it comes into my mind, do you know, sir,” said Wegg with an air of insinuating frankness (having first again looked hard at the book), “that you made a little mistake this morning, which I had meant to set you right in, only something put it out of my head. I think you said Rooshan Empire, sir?”
“It is Rooshan; ain’t it, Wegg?”
“No, sir. Roman. Roman.”
“What’s the difference, Wegg?”
“The difference, sir?” Mr. Wegg was faltering and in danger of breaking down, when a bright thought flashed upon him. “The difference, sir? There you place me in a difficulty, Mr. Boffin. Suffice it to observe, that the difference is best postponed to some other occasion when Mrs. Boffin does not honour us with her company. In Mrs. Boffin’s presence, sir,
