he windows of your mansion. I have already
thought of that, and taken my measures. No need to be bought out, sir.
Would Stepney Fields be considered intrusive? If not remote enough, I
can go remoter. In the words of the poet's song, which I do not quite
remember:

Thrown on the wide world, doom'd to wander and roam,
Bereft of my parents, bereft of a home,
A stranger to something and what's his name joy,
Behold little Edmund the poor Peasant boy.

--And equally,' said Mr Wegg, repairing the want of direct application
in the last line, 'behold myself on a similar footing!'

'Now, Wegg, Wegg, Wegg,' remonstrated the excellent Boffin. 'You are too
sensitive.'

'I know I am, sir,' returned Wegg, with obstinate magnanimity. 'I am
acquainted with my faults. I always was, from a child, too sensitive.'

'But listen,' pursued the Golden Dustman; 'hear me out, Wegg. You have
taken it into your head that I mean to pension you off.'

'True, sir,' returned Wegg, still with an obstinate magnanimity. 'I am
acquainted with my faults. Far be it from me to deny them. I HAVE taken
it into my head.'

'But I DON'T mean it.'

The assurance seemed hardly as comforting to Mr Wegg, as Mr Boffin
intended it to be. Indeed, an appreciable elongation of his visage might
have been observed as he replied:

'Don't you, indeed, sir?'

'No,' pursued Mr Boffin; 'because that would express, as I understand
it, that you were not going to do anything to deserve your money. But
you are; you are.'

'That, sir,' replied Mr Wegg, cheering up bravely, 'is quite another
pair of shoes. Now, my independence as a man is again elevated. Now, I
no longer

Weep for the hour,
When to Boffinses bower,
The Lord of the valley with offers came;
Neither does the moon hide her light
From the heavens to-night,
And weep behind her clouds o'er any individual in the present
Company's shame.

--Please to proceed, Mr Boffin.'

'Thank'ee, Wegg, both for your confidence in me and for your frequent
dropping into poetry; both of which is friendly. Well, then; my idea is,
that you should give up your stall, and that I should put you into the
Bower here, to keep it for us. It's a pleasant spot; and a man with
coals and candles and a pound a week might be in clover here.'

'Hem! Would that man, sir--we will say that man, for the purposes of
argueyment;' Mr Wegg made a smiling demonstration of great perspicuity
h