rowned with a lattice-work Arbour, in which, if you don't read out loud
many a book in the summer, ay, and as a friend, drop many a time into
poetry too, it shan't be my fault. Now, what'll you read on?'

'Thank you, sir,' returned Wegg, as if there were nothing new in his
reading at all. 'I generally do it on gin and water.'

'Keeps the organ moist, does it, Wegg?' asked Mr Boffin, with innocent
eagerness.

'N-no, sir,' replied Wegg, coolly, 'I should hardly describe it so, sir.
I should say, mellers it. Mellers it, is the word I should employ, Mr
Boffin.'

His wooden conceit and craft kept exact pace with the delighted
expectation of his victim. The visions rising before his mercenary mind,
of the many ways in which this connexion was to be turned to account,
never obscured the foremost idea natural to a dull overreaching man,
that he must not make himself too cheap.

Mrs Boffin's Fashion, as a less inexorable deity than the idol usually
worshipped under that name, did not forbid her mixing for her literary
guest, or asking if he found the result to his liking. On his returning
a gracious answer and taking his place at the literary settle, Mr Boffin
began to compose himself as a listener, at the opposite settle, with
exultant eyes.

'Sorry to deprive you of a pipe, Wegg,' he said, filling his own, 'but
you can't do both together. Oh! and another thing I forgot to name! When
you come in here of an evening, and look round you, and notice anything
on a shelf that happens to catch your fancy, mention it.'

Wegg, who had been going to put on his spectacles, immediately laid them
down, with the sprightly observation:

'You read my thoughts, sir. DO my eyes deceive me, or is that object up
there a--a pie? It can't be a pie.'

'Yes, it's a pie, Wegg,' replied Mr Boffin, with a glance of some little
discomfiture at the Decline and Fall.

'HAVE I lost my smell for fruits, or is it a apple pie, sir?' asked
Wegg.

'It's a veal and ham pie,' said Mr Boffin.

'Is it indeed, sir? And it would be hard, sir, to name the pie that is
a better pie than a weal and hammer,' said Mr Wegg, nodding his head
emotionally.

'Have some, Wegg?'

'Thank you, Mr Boffin, I think I will, at your invitation. I wouldn't
at any other party's, at the present juncture; but at yours, sir!--And
meaty jelly too, especially when a little salt, which is the case where
there's ham, is mellering to the organ, is very mellering to the organ.'
Mr