given him her mind
respecting the claims of the nat'ral affections, catch off Mrs Boffin's
bonnet (she wore, in general, a black straw, perched as a matter of
convenience on the top of her head), and send it spinning across
the yard. I have indeed. And once, when he did this in a manner that
amounted to personal, I should have given him a rattler for himself, if
Mrs Boffin hadn't thrown herself betwixt us, and received flush on the
temple. Which dropped her, Mr Lightwood. Dropped her.'

Mr Lightwood murmured 'Equal honour--Mrs Boffin's head and heart.'

'You understand; I name this,' pursued Mr Boffin, 'to show you, now the
affairs are wound up, that me and Mrs Boffin have ever stood as we were
in Christian honour bound, the children's friend. Me and Mrs Boffin
stood the poor girl's friend; me and Mrs Boffin stood the poor boy's
friend; me and Mrs Boffin up and faced the old man when we momently
expected to be turned out for our pains. As to Mrs Boffin,' said Mr
Boffin lowering his voice, 'she mightn't wish it mentioned now she's
Fashionable, but she went so far as to tell him, in my presence, he was
a flinty-hearted rascal.'

Mr Lightwood murmured 'Vigorous Saxon spirit--Mrs Boffin's
ancestors--bowmen--Agincourt and Cressy.'

'The last time me and Mrs Boffin saw the poor boy,' said Mr Boffin,
warming (as fat usually does) with a tendency to melt, 'he was a child
of seven year old. For when he came back to make intercession for his
sister, me and Mrs Boffin were away overlooking a country contract which
was to be sifted before carted, and he was come and gone in a single
hour. I say he was a child of seven year old. He was going away, all
alone and forlorn, to that foreign school, and he come into our place,
situate up the yard of the present Bower, to have a warm at our fire.
There was his little scanty travelling clothes upon him. There was his
little scanty box outside in the shivering wind, which I was going to
carry for him down to the steamboat, as the old man wouldn't hear of
allowing a sixpence coach-money. Mrs Boffin, then quite a young woman
and pictur of a full-blown rose, stands him by her, kneels down at the
fire, warms her two open hands, and falls to rubbing his cheeks; but
seeing the tears come into the child's eyes, the tears come fast into
her own, and she holds him round the neck, like as if she was protecting
him, and cries to me, "I'd give the wide wide world, I would, to run
away with him!" I