says the duck, and Bow-wow-wow says the dog.’ I couldn’t tell you how it come into my head or where from, but it had so much the sound of a rasper that I own to you it astonished myself. I was awful nigh bursting out a laughing though, when it made John stare!”
“You said, my pretty,” Mrs. Boffin reminded Bella, “that there was one other thing you couldn’t understand.”
“O yes!” cried Bella, covering her face with her hands; “but that I never shall be able to understand as long as I live. It is, how John could love me so when I so little deserved it, and how you, Mr. and Mrs. Boffin, could be so forgetful of yourselves, and take such pains and trouble, to make me a little better, and after all to help him to so unworthy a wife. But I am very very grateful.”
It was John Harmon’s turn then—John Harmon now for good, and John Rokesmith for nevermore—to plead with her (quite unnecessarily) in behalf of his deception, and to tell her, over and over again, that it had been prolonged by her own winning graces in her supposed station of life. This led on to many interchanges of endearment and enjoyment on all sides, in the midst of which the Inexhaustible being observed staring, in a most imbecile manner, on Mrs. Boffin’s breast, was pronounced to be supernaturally intelligent as to the whole transaction, and was made to declare to the ladies and gemplemorums, with a wave of the speckled fist (with difficulty detached from an exceedingly short waist), “I have already informed my venerable Ma that I know all about it!”
Then, said John Harmon, would Mrs. John Harmon come and see her house? And a dainty house it was, and a tastefully beautiful; and they went through it in procession; the Inexhaustible on Mrs. Boffin’s bosom (still staring) occupying the middle station, and Mr. Boffin bringing up the rear. And on Bella’s exquisite toilette table was an ivory casket, and in the casket were jewels the like of which she had never dreamed of, and