of Jacks-in-boxes! Don’t come flying out of your chair like that, Mr Venus!’
‘I ask your pardon, Mr Wegg. I am so soured.’
‘Yes, but hang it,’ says Wegg argumentatively, ‘a well-governed mind can be soured sitting! And as to being regarded in lights, there’s bumpey lights as well as bony. in which,’ again rubbing his head, ‘I object to regard myself.’
‘I’ll bear it in memory, sir.’
‘If you’ll be so good.’ Mr Wegg slowly subdues his ironical tone and his lingering irritation, and resumes his pipe. ‘We were talking of old Mr Harmon being a friend of yours.’
‘Not a friend, Mr Wegg. Only known to speak to, and to have a little deal with now and then. A very inquisitive character, Mr Wegg, regarding what was found in the dust. As inquisitive as secret.’
‘Ah! You found him secret?’ returns Wegg, with a greedy relish.
‘He had always the look of it, and the manner of it.’
‘Ah!’ with another roll of his eyes. ‘As to what was found in the dust now. Did you ever hear him mention how he found it, my dear friend? Living on the mysterious premises, one would like to know. For instance, where he found things? Or, for instance, how he set about it? Whether he began at the top of the mounds, or whether he began at the bottom. Whether he prodded’; Mr Wegg’s pantomime is skilful and expressive here; ‘or whether he scooped? Should you say scooped, my dear Mr Venus; or should you as a man—say prodded?’
‘I should say neither, Mr Wegg.’
‘As a fellow-man, Mr Venus—mix again—why neither?’
‘Because I suppose, sir, that what was found, was found in the sorting and sifting. All the mounds are sorted and sifted?’
‘You shall see ‘em and pass your opinion. Mix again.’
On each occasion of his saying ‘mix again’, Mr Wegg, with a hop on his wooden leg, hitches his chair a little nearer; more as if he were proposing that himself and Mr Venus should mix again, than that they should replenish their glasses.
‘Living (as I said before) on the mysterious premises,’ says Wegg when the other has acted on his hospitable entreaty, ‘one likes to know. Would you be inclined to say now—as a brother—that he ever hid things in the dust, as well as found ‘em?’
‘Mr Wegg, on the whole I should say he might.’
Mr Wegg claps on his spectacles, and admiringly surveys Mr Venus from head to foot.
‘As a mortal equally with myself, whose hand I take in mine for the first time this day, having unaccountably overlooked that act so full of boundless confidence binding a fellow-creetur to a fellow creetur,’ says Wegg, holding Mr Venus’s palm out, flat and ready for smiting, and now smiting it; ‘as such—and no other—for I scorn all lowlier ties betwixt myself and the man walking with his face erect that alone I call my Twin—regarded and regarding in this trustful bond—what do you think he might have hid?’
‘It is but a supposition, Mr Wegg.’
‘As a Being with his hand upon his heart,’ cries Wegg; and the apostrophe is not the less impressive for the Being’s hand being actually upon his rum and water; ‘put your supposition into language, and bring it out, Mr Venus!’
‘He was the species of old gentleman, sir,’ slowly returns that practical anatomist, after drinking, ‘that I should judge likely to take such opportunities as this place offered, of stowing away money, valuables, maybe papers.’
‘As one that was ever an ornament to human life,’ says Mr Wegg, again holding out Mr Venus’s palm as if he were going to tell his fortune by chiromancy, and holding his own up ready for smiting it when the time should come; ‘as one that the poet might have had his eye on, in writing the national naval words:
Helm a-weather, now lay her close,
Yard arm and yard arm she lies;
Again, cried I, Mr Venus, give her t’other dose,
Man shrouds and grapple, sir, or she flies!
—that is to say, regarded in the light of true British Oak, for such you are explain, Mr Venus, the expression “papers”!’
‘Seeing that the old gentleman was generally cutting off some near relation, or blocking out some natural affection,’ Mr Venus rejoins, ‘he most likely made a good many wills and codicils.’
The palm of Silas Wegg descends with a sounding smack upon the palm of Venus, and Wegg lavishly exclaims, ‘Twin in opinion equally with feeling! Mix a little more!’
Having now hitched his wooden leg and his chair close in front of Mr Venus, Mr Wegg rapidly mixes for both, gives his visitor his glass, touches its rim with the rim of his own, puts his own to his lips, puts it down, and spreading his hands on his visitor’s knees thus addresses him:
‘Mr Venus. It ain’t that I object to being passed over for a stranger, though I regard the stranger as a more than doubtful customer. It ain’t for the sake of making money, though money is ever welcome. It ain’t for myself, though I am not so haughty as to be above doing myself a good turn. It’s for the cause of the right.’
Mr Venus, passively winking his weak eyes both at once, demands: ‘What is, Mr Wegg?’
‘The friendly move, sir, that I now propose. You see the move, sir?’
‘Till you have pointed it out, Mr Wegg, I can’t say whether I do or not.’
‘If there is anything to be found on these premises, let us find it together. Let us make the friendly move of agreeing to look for it together. Let us make the friendly move of agreeing to share the profits of it equally betwixt us. In the cause of the right.’ Thus Silas assuming a noble air.
‘Then,’ says Mr Venus, looking up, after meditating with his hair held in his hands, as if he could only fix his attention by fixing his head; ‘if anything was to be unburied from under the dust, it would be kept a secret by you and me? Would that be it, Mr Wegg?’
‘That would depend upon what it was, Mr Venus. Say it was money, or plate, or jewellery, it would be as much ours as anybody else’s.’
Mr Venus rubs an eyebrow, interrogatively.
‘In the cause of the right it would. Because it would be unknowingly sold with the mounds else, and the buyer would get what he was never meant to have, and never bought. And what would that be, Mr Venus, but the cause of the wrong?’
‘Say it was papers,’ Mr Venus propounds.
‘According to what they contained we should offer to dispose of ‘em to the parties most interested,’ replies Wegg, promptly.
‘In the cause of the right, Mr Wegg?’
‘Always so, Mr Venus. If the parties should use them in the cause of the wrong, that would be their act and deed. Mr Venus. I have an opinion of you, sir, to which it is not easy to give mouth. Since I called upon you that evening when you were, as I may say,
