Wegg, who was all for clinching the nail he had so strongly driven home, announced that Boffin should see it without an hour’s delay. Taking him into custody for that purpose, or overshadowing him as if he really were his Evil Genius in visible form, Mr. Wegg clapped Mr. Boffin’s hat upon the back of his head, and walked him out by the arm, asserting a proprietorship over his soul and body that was at once more grim and more ridiculous than anything in Mr. Venus’s rare collection. That light-haired gentleman followed close upon their heels, at least backing up Mr. Boffin in a literal sense, if he had not had recent opportunities of doing so spiritually; while Mr. Boffin, trotting on as hard as he could trot, involved Silas Wegg in frequent collisions with the public, much as a preoccupied blind man’s dog may be seen to involve his master.
Thus they reached Mr. Venus’s establishment, somewhat heated by the nature of their progress thither. Mr. Wegg, especially, was in a flaming glow, and stood in the little shop, panting and mopping his head with his pocket-handkerchief, speechless for several minutes.
Meanwhile, Mr. Venus, who had left the duelling frogs to fight it out in his absence by candlelight for the public delectation, put the shutters up. When all was snug, and the shop-door fastened, he said to the perspiring Silas: “I suppose, Mr. Wegg, we may now produce the paper?”
“Hold on a minute, sir,” replied that discreet character; “hold on a minute. Will you obligingly shove that box—which you mentioned on a former occasion as containing miscellanies—towards me in the midst of the shop here?”
Mr. Venus did as he was asked.