“I never said anything of the sort,” Mr. Boffin declared in a state of the highest enjoyment.
“Then you ought to have said it, sir,” returned Bella, giving him two pulls and one kiss, “for you must have thought and meant it. You saw that good fortune was turning my stupid head and hardening my silly heart—was making me grasping, calculating, insolent, insufferable—and you took the pains to be the dearest and kindest fingerpost that ever was set up anywhere, pointing out the road that I was taking and the end it led to. Confess instantly!”
“John,” said Mr. Boffin, one broad piece of sunshine from head to foot, “I wish you’d help me out of this.”
“You can’t be heard by counsel, sir,” returned Bella. “You must speak for yourself. Confess instantly!”
“Well, my dear,” said Mr. Boffin, “the truth is, that when we did go in for the little scheme that my old lady has pinted out, I did put it to John, what did he think of going in for some such general scheme as you have pinted out? But I didn’t in any way so word it, because I didn’t in any way so mean it. I only said to John, wouldn’t it be more consistent, me going in for being a reg’lar brown bear respecting him, to go in as a reg’lar brown bear all round?”
“Confess this minute, sir,” said Bella, “that you did it to correct and amend me!”
“Certainly, my dear child,” said Mr. Boffin, “I didn’t do it to harm you; you may be sure of that. And I did hope it might just hint a caution. Still, it ought to be mentioned that no sooner had my old lady found out John, than John made known to her and me that he had had his eye upon a thankless person by the name of Silas Wegg. Partly for the punishment of which Wegg, by leading him on in a very unhandsome and underhanded game that he was playing, them books that you and me bought so many of together (and, by the by, my dear, he wasn’t Blackberry Jones, but Blewberry) was read aloud to me by that person of the name of Silas Wegg aforesaid.”
Bella, who was still on her knees at Mr. Boffin’s feet, gradually sank down into a sitting posture on the ground, as she meditated more and more thoughtfully, with her eyes upon his beaming face.
“Still,” said Bella, after this meditative pause, “there remain two things that I cannot understand. Mrs. Boffin never supposed any part of the change in Mr. Boffin to be real; did she?—You never did; did you?” asked Bella, turning to her.
“No!” returned Mrs. Boffin, with a most rotund and glowing negative.
“And yet you took it very much to heart,” said Bella. “I remember its making you very uneasy, indeed.”
“Ecod, you see Mrs. John has a sharp eye, John!” cried Mr. Boffin, shaking his head with an admiring air. “You’re right, my dear. The old lady nearly blowed us into shivers and smithers, many times.”
“Why?” asked Bella. “How did that happen, when she was in your secret?”
“Why, it was a weakness in the old lady,” said Mr. Boffin; “and yet, to tell you the whole truth and nothing but the truth, I’m rather proud of it. My dear, the old lady thinks so high of me that she couldn’t abear to see and hear me coming out as a reg’lar brown one. Couldn’t abear to make-believe as I meant it! In consequence of which, we was everlastingly in danger with her.”
Mrs. Boffin laughed heartily at herself; but a certain glistening in her honest eyes revealed that she was by no means cured of that dangerous propensity.
“I assure you, my dear,” said Mr. Boffin, “that on the celebrated day when I made what has since been agreed upon to be my grandest demonstration—I allude to Mew says the cat, Quack quack says the duck, and Bow-wow-wow says the dog—I assure you, my dear, that on that celebrated day, them flinty and unbelieving words hit my old lady so hard on my account, that I had to hold her, to prevent her running out after you, and defending me by saying I was playing a part.”
Mrs. Boffin laughed heartily again, and her eyes glistened again, and it then appeared, not only that in that burst of sarcastic eloquence Mr. Boffin was considered by his two fellow-conspirators to have outdone himself, but that in his own opinion it was a remarkable achievement. “Never thought of it afore the moment, my dear!” he observed to Bella. “When John said, if he had been so happy as to win your affections and possess your heart, it come into my head to turn round upon him with ‘Win her affections and possess her heart! Mew says the cat, Quack quack says the duck, and Bow-wow-wow says the dog.’ I couldn’t tell you how it come into my head or where from, but it had so much the sound of a rasper that I own to you it astonished myself. I was awful nigh bursting out a laughing though, when it made John stare!”
“You said, my pretty,” Mrs. Boffin reminded Bella, “that there was one other thing you couldn’t understand.”
“O yes!” cried Bella, covering her face with her hands; “but that I never shall be able to understand as long as I live. It is, how John could love me so when I so little deserved it, and how you, Mr. and Mrs. Boffin, could be so forgetful of yourselves, and take such pains and trouble, to make me a little better, and after all to help him to so unworthy a wife. But I am very very grateful.”
It was John Harmon’s
