“Must have been as good as born in it!” said Mr. Boffin, with admiration. “Do you like it?”
“I don’t mind it much,” returned Young Blight, heaving a sigh, as if its bitterness were past.
“What wages do you get?”
“Half what I could wish,” replied young Blight.
“What’s the whole that you could wish?”
“Fifteen shillings a week,” said the boy.
“About how long might it take you now, at a average rate of going, to be a Judge?” asked Mr. Boffin, after surveying his small stature in silence.
The boy answered that he had not yet quite worked out that little calculation.
“I suppose there’s nothing to prevent your going in for it?” said Mr. Boffin.
The boy virtually replied that as he had the honour to be a Briton who never never never, there was nothing to prevent his going in for it. Yet he seemed inclined to suspect that there might be something to prevent his coming out with it.
“Would a couple of pound help you up at all?” asked Mr. Boffin.
On this head, young Blight had no doubt whatever, so Mr. Boffin made him a present of that sum of money, and thanked him for his attention to his ( Mr. Boffin’s) affairs; which, he added, were now, he believed, as good as settled.
Then Mr. Boffin, with his stick at his ear, like a familiar spirit explaining the office to him, sat staring at a little bookcase of Law