“I am sorry, Wegg,” said Mr. Boffin, in his clemency, “that my old lady and I can’t have a better opinion of you than the bad one we are forced to entertain. But I shouldn’t like to leave you, after all said and done, worse off in life than I found you. Therefore say in a word, before we part, what it’ll cost to set you up in another stall.”
“And in another place,” John Harmon struck in. “You don’t come outside these windows.”
“ Mr. Boffin,” returned Wegg in avaricious humiliation: “when I first had the honour of making your acquaintance, I had got together a collection of ballads which was, I may say, above price.”
“Then they can’t be paid for,” said John Harmon, “and you had better not try, my dear sir.”
“Pardon me, Mr. Boffin,” resumed Wegg, with a malignant glance in the last speaker’s direction, “I was putting the case to you, who, if my senses did not deceive me, put the case to me. I had a very choice collection of ballads, and there was a new stock of gingerbread in the tin box. I say no more, but would rather leave it to you.”
“But it’s difficult to name what’s right,” said Mr. Boffin uneasily, with his hand in his pocket, “and I don’t want to go beyond what’s right, because you really have turned out such a very bad fellow. So artful, and so ungrateful you have been, Wegg; for when did I ever injure you?”
“There was also,” Mr. Wegg went on, in a meditative manner, “a errand connection, in which I was much respected. But I would not wish to be deemed covetous, and I would rather leave it to you, Mr. Boffin.”