arge elsewhere.

'You have no instructions to give me, Mr Boffin, in reference to this
place?'

'Not any, Rokesmith. No.'

'Might I ask, without seeming impertinent, whether you have any
intention of selling it?'

'Certainly not. In remembrance of our old master, our old master's
children, and our old service, me and Mrs Boffin mean to keep it up as
it stands.'

The Secretary's eyes glanced with so much meaning in them at the Mounds,
that Mr Boffin said, as if in answer to a remark:

'Ay, ay, that's another thing. I may sell THEM, though I should be sorry
to see the neighbourhood deprived of 'em too. It'll look but a poor dead
flat without the Mounds. Still I don't say that I'm going to keep 'em
always there, for the sake of the beauty of the landscape. There's no
hurry about it; that's all I say at present. I ain't a scholar in much,
Rokesmith, but I'm a pretty fair scholar in dust. I can price the Mounds
to a fraction, and I know how they can be best disposed of; and likewise
that they take no harm by standing where they do. You'll look in
to-morrow, will you be so kind?'

'Every day. And the sooner I can get you into your new house, complete,
the better you will be pleased, sir?'

'Well, it ain't that I'm in a mortal hurry,' said Mr Boffin; 'only when
you DO pay people for looking alive, it's as well to know that they ARE
looking alive. Ain't that your opinion?'

'Quite!' replied the Secretary; and so withdrew.

'Now,' said Mr Boffin to himself; subsiding into his regular series of
turns in the yard, 'if I can make it comfortable with Wegg, my affairs
will be going smooth.'

The man of low cunning had, of course, acquired a mastery over the man
of high simplicity. The mean man had, of course, got the better of the
generous man. How long such conquests last, is another matter; that they
are achieved, is every-day experience, not even to be flourished away by
Podsnappery itself. The undesigning Boffin had become so far immeshed
by the wily Wegg that his mind misgave him he was a very designing man
indeed in purposing to do more for Wegg. It seemed to him (so skilful
was Wegg) that he was plotting darkly, when he was contriving to do the
very thing that Wegg was plotting to get him to do. And thus, while he
was mentally turning the kindest of kind faces on Wegg this morning, he
was not absolutely sure but that he might somehow deserve the charge of
turning his back on him.

For these reasons Mr Boffin pa