“I don’t like it,” pettishly returned Venus as before. “I came into it without enough consideration. And besides again. Isn’t your own Mr. Boffin well acquainted with the Mounds? And wasn’t he well acquainted with the deceased and his ways? And has he ever showed any expectation of finding anything?”

At that moment wheels were heard.

“Now, I should be loth,” said Mr. Wegg, with an air of patient injury, “to think so ill of him as to suppose him capable of coming at this time of night. And yet it sounds like him.”

A ring at the yard bell.

“It is him,” said Mr. Wegg, “and he is capable of it. I am sorry, because I could have wished to keep up a little lingering fragment of respect for him.”