‘I want Society.’
‘Fashionable Society, my dear?’
‘Yes!’ cried Mrs Boffin, laughing with the glee of a child. ‘Yes! It’s no good my being kept here like Wax-Work; is it now?’
‘People have to pay to see Wax-Work, my dear,’ returned her husband, ‘whereas (though you’d be cheap at the same money) the neighbours is welcome to see you for nothing.’
‘But it don’t answer,’ said the cheerful Mrs Boffin. ‘When we worked like the neighbours, we suited one another. Now we have left work off; we have left off suiting one another.’
‘What, do you think of beginning work again?’ Mr Boffin hinted.
‘Out of the question! We have come into a great fortune, and we must do what’s right by our fortune; we must act up to it.’
Mr Boffin, who had a deep respect for his wife’s intuitive wisdom, replied, though rather pensively: ‘I suppose we must.’
‘It’s never been acted up to yet, and, consequently, no good has come of it,’ said Mrs Boffin.
‘True, to the present time,’ Mr Boffin assented, with his former pensiveness, as he took his seat upon his settle. ‘I hope good may be coming of it in the future time. Towards which, what’s your views, old lady?’
Mrs Boffin, a smiling creature, broad of figure and simple of nature, with her hands folded in her lap, and with buxom creases in her throat, proceeded to expound her views.
‘I say, a good house in a good neighbourhood, good things about us, good living, and good society. I say, live like our means, without extravagance, and be happy.’
‘Yes. I say be happy, too,’ assented the still pensive Mr Boffin. ‘Lor-a-mussy!’ exclaimed Mrs Boffin, laughing and clapping her hands, and gaily rocking herself to and fro, ‘when I think of me in a light yellow chariot and pair, with silver boxes to the wheels – ’
‘Oh! you was thinking of that, was you, my dear?’
‘Yes!’ cried the delighted creature. ‘And with a footman up behind, with a bar across, to keep his legs from being poled! And with a coachman up in front, sinking down into a seat big enough for three of him, all covered with upholstery in green and white! And with two bay horses tossing their heads and stepping higher than they trot long-ways! And with you and me leaning back inside, as grand as ninepence! Oh-h-h-h My! Ha ha ha ha ha!’
Mrs Boffin clapped her hands again, rocked herself again, beat her feet upon the floor, and wiped the tears of laughter from her eyes.
‘And what, my old lady,’ inquired Mr Boffin, when he also had sympathetically laughed: ‘what’s your views on the subject of the Bower?’
‘Shut it up. Don’t part with it, but put somebody in it, to keep it.’
‘Any other views?’
‘Noddy,’ said Mrs Boffin, coming from her fashionable sofa to his side on the plain settle, and hooking her comfortable arm through his, ‘Next I think – and I really have been thinking early and late – of the disappointed girl; her that was so cruelly disappointed, you know, both of her husband and his riches. Don’t you think we might do something for her? Have her to live with us? Or something of that sort?’
‘Ne-ver once thought of the way of doing it!’ cried Mr Boffin, smiting the table in his admiration. ‘What a thinking steam-ingein this old lady is. And she don’t know how she does it. Neither does the ingein!’
Mrs Boffin pulled his nearest ear, in acknowledgment of this piece of philosophy, and then said, gradually toning down to a motherly strain: ‘Last, and not least, I have taken a fancy. You remember dear little John Harmon, before he went to school? Over yonder across the yard, at our fire? Now that he is past all benefit of the money, and it’s come to us, I should like to find some orphan child, and take the boy and adopt him and give him John’s name, and provide for him. Somehow, it would make me easier, I fancy. Say it’s only a whim – ’
‘But I don’t say so,’ interposed her husband.
‘No, but deary, if you did – ’
‘I should be a Beast if I did,’ her husband interposed again.
‘That’s as much as to say you agree? Good and kind of you, and like you, deary! And don’t you begin to find it pleasant now,’ said Mrs Boffin, once more radiant in her comely way from head to foot, and once more smoothing her dress with immense enjoyment, ‘don’t you begin to find it pleasant already, to think that a child will be made brighter, and better, and happier, because of that poor sad child that day? And isn’t it pleasant to know that the good will be done with the poor sad child’s own money?’
‘Yes; and it’s pleasant to know that you are Mrs Boffin,’ said her husband, ‘and it’s been a pleasant thing to know this many and many a year!’ It was ruin to Mrs Boffin’s aspirations, but, having so spoken, they sat side by side, a hopelessly Unfashionable pair.
These two ignorant and unpolished people had guided themselves so far on in their journey of life, by a religious sense of duty and desire to do right. Ten thousand weaknesses and absurdities might have been detected in the breasts of both; ten thousand vanities additional, possibly, in the breast of the woman. But the hard wrathful and sordid nature that had wrung as much work out of them as could be got in their best days, for as little money as could be paid to hurry on their worst, had never been so warped but that it knew their moral straightness and respected it. In its own despite, in a constant conflict with itself and them, it had done so. And this is the eternal law. For, Evil often stops short at itself and dies with the doer of it; but Good, never.
Through his most inveterate purposes, the dead Jailer of Harmony Jail had known these two faithful servants to be honest and true. While he raged at them and reviled them for opposing him with the speech of the honest and true, it had scratched his stony heart, and he had perceived the powerlessness of all his wealth to buy them if he had addressed himself to the attempt. So, even while he was their griping taskmaster and never gave them a good word, he had written their names down in his will. So, even while it was his daily declaration that he mistrusted all mankind – and sorely indeed he did mistrust all who bore any resemblance to himself – he was as certain that these two people, surviving him, would be trustworthy in all things from the greatest to the least, as he was that he must surely die.
Mr and Mrs Boffin, sitting side by side, with Fashion withdrawn to an immeasurable distance, fell to discussing how they could best find their orphan. Mrs Boffin suggested advertisement in the newspapers, requesting orphans answering annexed description to apply at the Bower on a certain day; but Mr Boffin wisely apprehending obstruction of the neighbouring thoroughfares by orphan swarms, this course was negatived. Mrs Boffin next suggested application to their clergyman for a likely orphan. Mr Boffin thinking better of this scheme, they resolved to call upon the reverend gentleman at once, and to take the same opportunity of making acquaintance with Miss Bella Wilfer. In order that these visits might be visits of state, Mrs Boffin’s equipage was ordered out.
This consisted of a long hammer-headed old horse, formerly used in the business, attached to a four-wheeled chaise of the same period, which had long been exclusively used by the Harmony Jail poultry as the favourite laying-place of several discreet hens. An unwonted application of corn to the horse, and of paint and varnish to the carriage, when both fell in as a part of the Boffin legacy, had made what Mr Boffin considered a neat turn-out of the whole; and a driver being added, in the person of a long hammer-headed
