my company when he saw me, and then in a single moment every grain of the gunpowder that had been lying sprinkled thick about him ever since I first set eyes upon him as a man at the Bower, took fire! Too many a time had I seen him sitting lonely, when he was a poor child, to be pitied, heart and hand! Too many a time had I seen him in need of being brightened up with a comforting word! Too many and too many a time to be mistaken, when that glimpse of him come at last! No, no! I just makes out to cry, ‘I know you now! You’re John!’ And he catches me as I drops.—So what,” says Mrs. Boffin, breaking off in the rush of her speech to smile most radiantly, “might you think by this time that your husband’s name was, dear?”
“Not,” returned Bella, with quivering lips; “not Harmon? That’s not possible?”
“Don’t tremble. Why not possible, deary, when so many things are possible?” demanded Mrs. Boffin, in a soothing tone.
“He was killed,” gasped Bella.
“Thought to be,” said Mrs. Boffin. “But if ever John Harmon drew the breath of life on earth, that is certainly John Harmon’s arm round your waist now, my pretty. If ever John Harmon had a wife on earth, that wife is certainly you. If ever John Harmon and his wife had a child on earth, that child is certainly this.”
By a masterstroke of secret arrangement, the inexhaustible baby here appeared at the door, suspended in midair by invisible agency. Mrs. Boffin, plunging at it, brought it to Bella’s lap, where both Mrs. and Mr. Boffin (as the saying is) “took it out of” the Inexhaustible in a shower of caresses. It was only this timely appearance that kept Bella from swooning. This, and her husband’s earnestness in explaining further to her how it had come to pass that he had been supposed to be slain, and had even been suspected of his own murder; also, how he had put a pious