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
mankin