a quantity of dim side window and blank back premises, and it cost his mind a world of trouble so to lay it out as to account for everything in its external appearance. But, this once done, was quite satisfactory, and he rested persuaded, that he knew his way about the house blindfold: from the barred garrets in the high roof, to the two iron extinguishers before the main door—which seemed to request all lively visitors to have the kindness to put themselves out, before entering.
Assuredly, this stall of Silas Wegg’s was the hardest little stall of all the sterile little stalls in London. It gave you the face-ache to look at his apples, the stomach-ache to look at his oranges, the tooth-ache to look at his nuts. Of the latter commodity he had always a grim little heap, on which lay a little wooden measure which had no discernible inside, and was considered to represent the penn’orth appointed by Magna Charta. Whether from too much east wind or no—it was an easterly corner—the stall, the stock, and the keeper, were all as dry as the Desert. Wegg was a knotty man, and a close-grained, with a face carved out of very hard material, that had just as much play of expression as a watchman’s rattle. When he laughed, certain jerks occurred in it, and the rattle sprung. Sooth to say, he was so wooden a man that he seemed to have taken his wooden leg naturally, and rather suggested to the fanciful observer, that he might be expected—if his development received no untimely check—to be completely set up with a pair of wooden legs in about six months.
Mr Wegg was an observant person, or, as he himself said, ‘took a powerful sight of notice’. He saluted all his regular passers-by every day, as he sat on his stool backed up by the lamp-post; and on the adaptable character of these salutes he greatly plumed himself. Thus, to the rector, he addressed a bow, compounded of lay deference, and a slight touch of the shady preliminary meditation at church; to the doctor, a confidential bow, as to a gentleman whose acquaintance with his inside he begged respectfully to acknowledge; before the Quality he delighted to abase himself; and for Uncle Parker, who was in the army (at least, so he had settled it), he put his open hand to the side of his hat, in a military manner which that angry-eyed buttoned-up inflammatory-faced old gentleman appeared but imperfectly to appreciate.
The only article in which Silas dealt, that was not hard, was gingerbread. On a certain day, some wretched infant having purchased the damp gingerbread-horse (fearfully out of condition), and the adhesive bird-cage, which had been exposed for the day’s sale, he had taken a tin box from under his stool to produce a relay of those dreadful specimens, and was going to look in at the lid, when he said to himself, pausing: ‘Oh! Here you are again!’
The words referred to a broad, round-shouldered, one-sided old fellow in mourning, coming comically ambling towards the corner, dressed in a pea over-coat, and carrying a large stick. He wore thick shoes, and thick leather gaiters, and thick gloves like a hedger’s. Both as to his dress and to himself, he was of an overlapping rhinoceros build, with folds in his cheeks, and his forehead, and his eyelids, and his lips, and his ears; but with bright, eager, childishly-inquiring, grey eyes, under his ragged eyebrows, and broad-brimmed hat. A very odd-looking old fellow altogether.
‘Here you are again,’ repeated Mr Wegg, musing. ‘And what are you now? Are you in the Funns, or where are you? Have you lately come to settle in this neighbourhood, or do you own to another neighbourhood? Are you in independent circumstances, or is it wasting the motions of a bow on you? Come! I’ll speculate! I’ll invest a bow in you.’
Which Mr Wegg, having replaced his tin box, accordingly did, as he rose to bait his gingerbread-trap for some other devoted infant. The salute was acknowledged with:
‘Morning, sir! Morning! Morning!’
(‘Calls me Sir!’ said Mr Wegg, to himself; ‘he won’t answer. A bow gone!’)
‘Morning, morning, morning!’
‘Appears to be rather a ‘arty old cock, too,’ said Mr Wegg, as before; ‘Good morning to you, sir.’
‘Do you remember me, then?’ asked his new acquaintance, stopping in his amble, one-sided, before the stall, and speaking in a pounding way, though with great good-humour.
‘I have noticed you go past our house, sir, several times in the course of the last week or so.’
‘Our house,’ repeated the other. ‘Meaning—?’
‘Yes,’ said Mr Wegg, nodding, as the other pointed the clumsy forefinger of his right glove at the corner house.
‘Oh! Now, what,’ pursued the old fellow, in an inquisitive manner, carrying his knotted stick in his left arm as if it were a baby, ‘what do they allow you now?’
‘It’s job work that I do for our house,’ returned Silas, drily, and with reticence; ‘it’s not yet brought to an exact allowance.’
‘Oh! It’s not yet brought to an exact allowance? No! It’s not yet brought to an exact allowance. Oh!—Morning, morning, morning!’
‘Appears to be rather a cracked old cock,’ thought Silas, qualifying his former good opinion, as the other ambled off. But, in a moment he was back again with the question:
‘How did you get your wooden leg?’
Mr Wegg replied, (tartly to this personal inquiry), ‘In an accident.’
‘Do you like it?’
‘Well! I haven’t got to keep it warm,’ Mr Wegg made answer, in a sort of desperation occasioned by the singularity of the question.
‘He hasn’t,’ repeated the other to his knotted stick, as he gave it a hug; ‘he hasn’t got—ha!—ha!—to keep it warm! Did you ever hear of the name of Boffin?’
‘No,’ said Mr Wegg, who was growing restive under this examination. ‘I never did hear of the name of Boffin.’
‘Do you like it?’
‘Why, no,’ retorted Mr Wegg, again approaching desperation; ‘I can’t say I do.’
‘Why don’t you like it?’
‘I don’t know why I don’t,’ retorted Mr Wegg, approaching frenzy, ‘but I don’t at all.’
‘Now, I’ll tell you something that’ll make you sorry for that,’ said the stranger, smiling. ‘My name’s Boffin.’
‘I can’t help it!’ returned Mr Wegg. Implying in his manner the offensive addition, ‘and if I could, I wouldn’t.’
‘But there’s another chance for you,’ said Mr Boffin, smiling still, ‘Do you like the name of Nicodemus? Think it over. Nick, or Noddy.’
‘It is not, sir,’ Mr Wegg rejoined, as he sat down on his stool, with an air of gentle resignation, combined with melancholy candour; ‘it is not a name as I could wish any one that I had a respect for, to call me by; but there may be persons that would not view it with the same objections.—I don’t know why,’ Mr Wegg added, anticipating another question.
‘Noddy Boffin,’ said that gentleman. ‘Noddy. That’s my name. Noddy—or Nick—Boffin. What’s your name?’
‘Silas Wegg.—I don’t,’ said Mr Wegg, bestirring himself to take the same precaution as before, ‘I don’t know why Silas, and I
