t your head off,
and fling THAT out of window! So. That's the last short speech, do you
understand?'

Silas, released, put his hand to his throat, cleared it, and looked as
if he had a rather large fishbone in that region. Simultaneously with
this action on his part in his corner, a singular, and on the surface
an incomprehensible, movement was made by Mr Sloppy: who began backing
towards Mr Wegg along the wall, in the manner of a porter or heaver who
is about to lift a sack of flour or coals.

'I am sorry, Wegg,' said Mr Boffin, in his clemency, 'that my old lady
and I can't have a better opinion of you than the bad one we are forced
to entertain. But I shouldn't like to leave you, after all said and
done, worse off in life than I found you. Therefore say in a word,
before we part, what it'll cost to set you up in another stall.'

'And in another place,' John Harmon struck in. 'You don't come outside
these windows.'

'Mr Boffin,' returned Wegg in avaricious humiliation: 'when I first had
the honour of making your acquaintance, I had got together a collection
of ballads which was, I may say, above price.'

'Then they can't be paid for,' said John Harmon, 'and you had better not
try, my dear sir.'

'Pardon me, Mr Boffin,' resumed Wegg, with a malignant glance in the
last speaker's direction, 'I was putting the case to you, who, if my
senses did not deceive me, put the case to me. I had a very choice
collection of ballads, and there was a new stock of gingerbread in the
tin box. I say no more, but would rather leave it to you.'

'But it's difficult to name what's right,' said Mr Boffin uneasily, with
his hand in his pocket, 'and I don't want to go beyond what's right,
because you really have turned out such a very bad fellow. So artful,
and so ungrateful you have been, Wegg; for when did I ever injure you?'

'There was also,' Mr Wegg went on, in a meditative manner, 'a errand
connection, in which I was much respected. But I would not wish to be
deemed covetous, and I would rather leave it to you, Mr Boffin.'

'Upon my word, I don't know what to put it at,' the Golden Dustman
muttered.

'There was likewise,' resumed Wegg, 'a pair of trestles, for which alone
a Irish person, who was deemed a judge of trestles, offered five and
six--a sum I would not hear of, for I should have lost by it--and there
was a stool, a umbrella, a clothes-horse, and a tray. But I leave it to
you, Mr Boffin.'

The Golden Dustman seemi