to myself I calls to him, ‘Noddy, well I might say as I did say, that night at the Bower, for the Lord be thankful this is John!’ On which he gives a heave, and down he goes likewise, with his head under the writing-table. This brings me round comfortable, and that brings him round comfortable, and then John and him and me we all fall a crying for joy.”
“Yes! They cry for joy, my darling,” her husband struck in. “You understand? These two, whom I come to life to disappoint and dispossess, cry for joy!”
Bella looked at him confusedly, and looked again at Mrs. Boffin’s radiant face.
“That’s right, my dear, don’t you mind him,” said Mrs. Boffin, “stick to me. Well! Then we sits down, gradually gets cool, and holds a confabulation. John, he tells us how he is despairing in his mind on accounts of a certain fair young person, and how, if I hadn’t found him out, he was going away to seek his fortune far and wide, and had fully meant never to come to life, but to leave the property as our wrongful inheritance forever and a day. At which you never see a man so frightened as my Noddy was. For to think that he should have come into the property wrongful, however innocent, and—more than that—might have gone on keeping it to his dying day, turned him whiter than chalk.”
“And you too,” said Mr. Boffin.
“Don’t you mind him, neither, my deary,” resumed Mrs. Boffin; “stick to me. This brings up a confabulation regarding the certain fair young person; when Noddy he gives it as his opinion that she is a deary creetur. ‘She may be a leetle spoilt, and nat’rally spoilt,’ he says, ‘by circumstances, but that’s only the surface, and I lay my life,’ he says, ‘that she’s the true golden gold at heart.’ ”
“So did you,” said Mr. Boffin.