child.’ So of a night, when it was very cold, or when the wind roared, or the rain dripped heavy, she would wake sobbing, and call out in a fluster, ‘Don’t you see the poor child’s face? O shelter the poor child!’—till in course of years it gently wore out, as many things do.”
“My dear Mr. Boffin, everything wears to rags,” said Mortimer, with a light laugh.
“I won’t go so far as to say everything,” returned Mr. Boffin, on whom his manner seemed to grate, “because there’s some things that I never found among the dust. Well, sir. So Mrs. Boffin and me grow older and older in the old man’s service, living and working pretty hard in it, till the old man is discovered dead in his bed. Then Mrs. Boffin and me seal up his box, always standing on the table at the side of his bed, and having frequently heerd tell of the Temple as a spot where lawyer’s dust is contracted for, I come down here in search of a lawyer to advise, and I see your young man up at this present elevation, chopping at the flies on the windowsill with his penknife, and I give him a Hoy! not then having the pleasure of your acquaintance, and by that means come to gain the honour. Then you, and the gentleman in the uncomfortable neckcloth under the little archway in Saint Paul’s Churchyard—”
“Doctors’ Commons,” observed Lightwood.
“I understood it was another name,” said Mr. Boffin, pausing, “but you know best. Then you and Doctor Scommons, you go to work, and you do the thing that’s proper, and you and Doctor S. take steps for finding out the poor boy, and at last you do find out the poor boy, and me and Mrs. Boffin often exchange the observation, ‘We shall see him again, under happy circumstances.’ But it was never to be; and the want of satisfactoriness is, that after all the money never gets to him.”
“But it gets,” remarked Lightwood, with a languid inclination of the head, “into excellent hands.”