Our Mutual Friend
‘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 don’t know why
Wegg.’
‘Now, Wegg,’ said Mr Boffin, hugging his stick closer, ‘I want to make a
sort of offer to you. Do you remember when you first see me?’
The wooden Wegg looked at him with a meditative eye, and also with a
softened air as descrying possibility of profit. ‘Let me think. I ain’t
quite sure, and yet I generally take a powerful sight of notice, too.
Was it on a Monday morning, when the butcher-boy had been to our house
for orders, and bought a ballad of me, which, being unacquainted with
the tune, I run it over to him?’
‘Right, Wegg, right! But he bought more than one.’
‘Yes, to be sure, sir; he bought several; and wishing to lay out his
money to the best, he took my opinion to guide his choice, and we went
over the collection together. To be sure we did. Here was him as it
might be, and here was myself as it might be, and there was you, Mr
Boffin, as you identically are, with your self-same stick under your
very same arm, and your very same back towards us. To—be—sure!’ added
Mr Wegg, looking a little round Mr Boffin, to take him in the rear,
and identify this last extraordinary coincidence, ‘your wery self-same
back!’
‘What do you think I was doing, Wegg?’
‘I should judge, sir, that you might be glancing your eye down the
street.’
‘No, Wegg. I was a listening.’
‘Was you, indeed?’ said Mr Wegg, dubiously.
‘Not in a dishonourable way, Wegg, because you was singing to the
butcher; and you wouldn’t sing secrets to a butcher in the street, you
know.’
‘It never happened that I did so yet, to the best of my remembrance,’
said Mr Wegg, cautiously. ‘But I might do it. A man can’t say what he
might wish to do some day or another.’ (This, not to release any little
advantage he might derive from Mr Boffin’s avowal.)
‘Well,’ repeated Boffin, ‘I was a listening to you and to him. And what
do you—you haven’t got another stool, have you? I’m rather thick in my
breath.’
‘I haven’t got another, but you’re welcome to this,’ said Wegg,
resigning it. ‘It’s a treat to me to stand.’
‘Lard!’ exclaimed Mr Boffin, in a tone of great enjoyment, as he settled
himself down, still nursing his stick like a baby, ‘it’s a pleasant
place, this! And then to be shut in on each side, with these ballads,
like so many book-leaf blinkers! Why, its delightful!’
‘If I am not mistaken, sir,’ Mr Wegg delicately hinted, resting a hand
on his stall, and bending over the discursive Boffin, ‘you alluded to
some offer or another that was in your mind?’
‘I’m coming to it! All right. I’m coming to it! I was going to say that
when I listened that morning, I listened with hadmiration amounting to
haw. I thought to myself, “Here’s a man with a wooden leg—a literary
man with—“’
‘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, and also by the friendly
disposition of Mr Wegg, as exemplified in his so soon dropping into
poetry, Mr Boffin again shook hands with that ligneous sharper, and
besought him to name his hour. Mr Wegg named eight.
‘Where I live,’ said Mr Boffin, ‘is called The Bower. Boffin’s Bower is
the name Mrs Boffin christened it when we come into it as a property.
If you should meet with anybody that don’t know it by that name (which
hardly anybody does), when you’ve got nigh upon about a odd mile, or
say and a quarter if you like, up Maiden Lane, Battle Bridge, ask for
Harmony Jail, and you’ll be put right. I shall expect you, Wegg,’ said
Mr Boffin, clapping him on the shoulder with the greatest enthusiasm,
‘most joyfully. I shall have no peace or patience till you come. Print
is now opening ahead of me. This night, a literary man—WITH a wooden
leg—’ he bestowed an admiring look upon that decoration, as if it
greatly enhanced the relish of Mr Wegg’s attainments—‘will begin to