‘N – not exactly so, sir,’ said Mr Wegg.
‘Why, you know every one of these songs by name and by tune, and if you want to read or to sing any one on ‘em off straight, you’ve only to whip on your spectacles and do it!’ cried Mr Boffin. ‘I see you at it!’
‘Well, sir,’ returned Mr Wegg, with a conscious inclination of the head; ‘we’ll say literary, then.’
‘“A literary man —with a wooden leg – and all Print is open to him!” That’s what I thought to myself, that morning,’ pursued Mr Boffin, leaning forward to describe, uncramped by the clotheshorse, as large an arc as his right arm could make; ‘“all Print is open to him!” And it is, ain’t it?’
‘Why, truly, sir,’ Mr Wegg admitted, with modesty; ‘I believe you couldn’t show me the piece of English print, that I wouldn’t be equal to collaring and throwing.’
‘On the spot?’ said Mr Boffin.
‘On the spot.’
‘I know’d it! Then consider this. Here am I, a man without a wooden leg, and yet all print is shut to me.’
‘Indeed, sir?’ Mr Wegg returned with increasing self-complacency. ‘Education neglected?’
‘Neg – lected!’ repeated Boffin, with emphasis. ‘That ain’t no word for it. I don’t mean to say but what if you showed me a B, I could so far give you change for it, as to answer Boffin.’
‘Come, come, sir,’ said Mr Wegg, throwing in a little encouragement, ‘that’s something, too.’
‘It’s something,’ answered Mr Boffin, ‘but I’ll take my oath it ain’t much.’
‘Perhaps it’s not as much as could be wished by an inquiring mind, sir,’ Mr Wegg admitted.
‘Now, look here. I’m retired from business. Me and Mrs Boffin – Henerietty Boffin – which her father’s name was Henery, and her mother’s name was Hetty, and so you get it – we live on a compittance, under the will of a diseased governor.’
‘Gentleman dead, sir?’
‘Man alive, don’t I tell you? A diseased governor? Now, it’s too late for me to begin shovelling and sifting at alphabeds and grammar-books. I’m getting to be a old bird, and I want to take it easy. But I want some reading – some fine bold reading, some splendid book in a gorging Lord-Mayor’s-Show of wollumes’ (probably meaning gorgeous, but misled by association of ideas); ‘as’ll reach right down your pint of view, and take time to go by you. How can I get that reading, Wegg? By,’ tapping him on the breast with the head of his thick stick, ‘paying a man truly qualified to do it, so much an hour (say twopence) to come and do it.’
‘Hem! Flattered, sir, I am sure,’ said Wegg, beginning to regard himself in quite a new light. ‘Hew! This is the offer you mentioned, sir?’
‘Yes. Do you like it?’
‘I am considering of it, Mr Boffin.’
‘I don’t,’ said Boffin, in a free-handed manner, ‘want to tie a literary man —with a wooden leg – down too tight. A halfpenny an hour shan’t part us. The hours are your own to choose, after you’ve done for the day with your house here. I live over Maiden-Lane way – out Holloway direction – and you’ve only got to go East-and-by-North when you’ve finished here, and you’re there. Twopence halfpenny an hour,’ said Boffin, taking a piece of chalk from his pocket and getting off the stool to work the sum on the top of it in his own way; ‘two long’uns and a short’un – twopence halfpenny; two short’uns is a long’un and two two long’uns is four long’uns – making five long’uns; six nights a week at five long’uns a night,’ scoring them all down separately, ‘and you mount up to thirty long’uns. A round’un! Half a crown!’
Pointing to this result as a large and satisfactory one, Mr Boffin smeared it out with his moistened glove, and sat down on the remains.
‘Half a crown,’ said Wegg, meditating. ‘Yes. (It ain’t much, sir.) Half a crown.’
‘Per week, you know.’
‘Per week. Yes. As to the amount of strain upon the intellect now. Was you thinking at all of poetry?’ Mr Wegg inquired, musing.
‘Would it come dearer?’ Mr Boffin asked.
‘It would come dearer,’ Mr Wegg returned. ‘For when a person comes to grind off poetry night after night, it is but right he should expect to be paid for its weakening effect on his mind.’
‘To tell you the truth Wegg,’ said Boffin, ‘I wasn’t thinking of poetry, except in so fur as this: – If you was to happen now and then to feel yourself in the mind to tip me and Mrs Boffin one of your ballads, why then we should drop into poetry.’
‘I follow you, sir,’ said Wegg. ‘But not being a regular musical professional, I should be loath to engage myself for that; and therefore when I dropped into poetry, I should ask to be considered so fur, in the light of a friend.’
At this, Mr Boffin’s eyes sparkled, and he shook Silas earnestly by the hand: protesting that it was more than he could have asked, and that he took it very kindly indeed.
‘What do you think of the terms, Wegg?’ Mr Boffin then demanded, with unconcealed anxiety.
Silas, who had stimulated this anxiety by his hard reserve of manner, and who had begun to understand his man very well, replied with an air; as if he were saying something extraordinarily generous and great:
‘Mr Boffin, I never bargain.’
‘So I should have thought of you!’ said Mr Boffin, admiringly. ‘No, sir. I never did ‘aggle and I never will ‘aggle. Consequently I meet you at once, free and fair, with – Done, for double the money!’
Mr Boffin seemed a little unprepared for this conclusion, but assented, with the remark, ‘You know better what it ought to be than I do, Wegg,’ and again shook hands with him upon it.
‘Could you begin to night, Wegg?’ he then demanded.
‘Yes, sir,’ said Mr Wegg, careful to leave all the eagerness to him. ‘I see no difficulty if you wish it. You are provided with the needful implement – a book, sir?’
‘Bought him at a sale,’ said Mr Boffin. ‘Eight wollumes. Red and gold. Purple ribbon in every wollume, to keep the place where you leave off. Do you know him?’
‘The book’s name, sir?’ inquired Silas.
‘I thought you might have know’d him without it,’ said Mr Boffin slightly disappointed. ‘His name is Decline-And-Fall-Off-The-Rooshan-Empire.’ (Mr Boffin went over these stones slowly and with much caution.)
‘Ay indeed!’ said Mr Wegg, nodding his head with an air of friendly recognition.
‘You know him, Wegg?’
‘I haven’t been not to say right slap through him, very lately,’ Mr Wegg made answer, ‘having been otherways employed, Mr Boffin. But know him? Old familiar declining and falling off the Rooshan? Rather, sir! Ever since I was not so high as your stick. Ever since my eldest brother left our cottage to enlist into the army. On which occasion, as the ballad that was made about it describes:
‘Beside that cottage door, Mr Boffin,
A girl was on her knees;
She held aloft a snowy scarf, Sir,
Which (my eldest brother noticed) fluttered in the breeze.
She breathed a prayer for him, Mr Boffin;
A prayer he coold not hear.
And my eldest brother lean’d upon his sword, Mr Boffin,
And wiped away a tear.’
Much impressed by this family circumstance,