Our Mutual Friend

upon him, and readily received the Boffins. He was quite a young man, expensively educated and wretchedly paid, with quite a young wife and half a dozen quite young children. He was under the necessity of teaching and translating from the classics, to eke out his scanty means, yet was generally expected to have more time to spare than the idlest person in the parish, and more money than the richest. He accepted the needless inequalities and inconsistencies of his life, with a kind of conventional submission that was almost slavish; and any daring layman who would have adjusted such burdens as his, more decently and graciously, would have had small help from him.

With a ready patient face and manner, and yet with a latent smile that showed a quick enough observation of Mrs. Boffin’s dress, Mr. Milvey, in his little book-room⁠—charged with sounds and cries as though the six children above were coming down through the ceiling, and the roasting leg of mutton below were coming up through the floor⁠—listened to Mrs. Boffin’s statement of her want of an orphan.

“I think,” said Mr. Milvey, “that you have never had a child of your own, Mr. and Mrs. Boffin?”

Never.

“But, like the Kings and Queens in the fairy tales, I suppose you have wished for one?”

In a general way, yes.

Mr. Milvey smiled again, as he remarked to himself “Those kings and queens were always wishing for children.” It occurring to him, perhaps, that if they had been curates, their wishes might have tended in the opposite direction.

“I think,” he pursued, “we had better take Mrs. Milvey into our council. She is indispensable to me. If you please, I’ll call her.”

So, Mr. Milvey called, “Margaretta, my dear!” and Mrs. Milvey came down. A pretty, bright little woman, something worn by anxiety, who had repressed many pretty tastes and bright fancies, and substituted in their stead, schools, soup, flannel, coals, and all the weekday cares and Sunday coughs of a large population, young and old. As gallantly had Mr. Milvey repressed much in himself that naturally belonged to his old studies and old fellow-students, and taken up among the poor and their children with the hard crumbs of life.

“Mr. and Mrs. Boffin, my dear, whose good fortune you have heard of.”

Mrs. Milvey, with the most unaffected grace in the world, congratulated them, and was glad to see them. Yet her engaging face, being an open as well as a perceptive one, was not without her husband’s latent smile.

“Mrs. Boffin wishes to adopt a little boy, my dear.”

Mrs. Milvey, looking rather alarmed, her husband added:

“An orphan, my dear.”

“Oh!” said Mrs. Milvey, reassured for her own little boys.

“And I was thinking, Margaretta, that perhaps old Mrs. Goody’s grandchild might answer the purpose.”

“Oh my dear Frank! I don’t think that would do!”

“No?”

“Oh no!”

The smiling Mrs. Boffin, feeling it incumbent on her to take part in the conversation, and being charmed with the emphatic little wife and her ready interest, here offered her acknowledgments and inquired what there was against him?

“I don’t think,” said Mrs. Milvey, glancing at the Reverend Frank, “⁠—and I believe my husband will agree with me when he considers it again⁠—that you could possibly keep that orphan clean from snuff. Because his grandmother takes so many ounces, and drops it over him.”

“But he would not be living with his grandmother then, Margaretta,” said Mr. Milvey.

“No, Frank, but it would be impossible to keep her from Mrs. Boffin’s house; and the more there was to eat and drink there, the oftener she would go. And she is an inconvenient woman. I hope it’s not uncharitable to remember that last Christmas Eve she drank eleven cups of tea, and grumbled all the time. And she is not a grateful woman, Frank. You recollect her addressing a crowd outside this house, about her wrongs, when, one night after we had gone to bed, she brought back the petticoat of new flannel that had been given her, because it was too short.”

“That’s true,” said Mr. Milvey. “I don’t think that would do. Would little Harrison⁠—”

“Oh, Frank!” remonstrated his emphatic wife.

“He has no grandmother, my dear.”

“No, but I don’t think Mrs. Boffin would like an orphan who squints so much.”

“That’s true again,” said Mr. Milvey, becoming haggard with perplexity. “If a little girl would do⁠—”

“But, my dear Frank, Mrs. Boffin wants a boy.”

“That’s true again,” said Mr. Milvey. “Tom Bocker is a nice boy,” (thoughtfully).

“But I doubt, Frank,” Mrs. Milvey hinted, after a little hesitation, “if Mrs. Boffin wants an orphan quite nineteen, who drives a cart and waters the roads.”

Mr. Milvey referred the point to Mrs. Boffin in a look; on that smiling lady’s shaking her black velvet bonnet and bows, he remarked, in lower spirits, “that’s true again.”

“I am sure,” said Mrs. Boffin, concerned at giving so much trouble, “that if I had known you would have taken so much pains, sir⁠—and you too, ma’am⁠—I don’t think I would have come.”

“Pray don’t say that!” urged Mrs. Milvey.

“No, don’t say that,” assented Mr. Milvey, “because we are so much obliged to you for giving us the preference.” Which Mrs. Milvey confirmed; and really the kind, conscientious couple spoke, as if they kept some profitable orphan warehouse and were personally patronized. “But it is a responsible trust,” added Mr. Milvey, “and difficult to discharge. At the same time, we are naturally very unwilling to lose the chance you so kindly give us, and if you could afford us a day or two to look about us⁠—you know, Margaretta, we might carefully examine the workhouse, and the Infant School, and your District.”

“To be sure!” said the emphatic little wife.

“We have orphans, I know,” pursued Mr. Milvey, quite with the air as if he might have added, “in stock,” and quite as anxiously as if there were great competition in the business and he were afraid of losing an order, “over at the clay-pits; but they are employed by relations or friends, and I am afraid it would come at