“You might be a sort of protection for me, if you remained in it,” said Mr. Boffin; “you might stand betwixt him and me, and take the edge off him. Don’t you feel as if you could make a show of remaining in it, Venus, till I had time to turn myself round?”

Venus naturally inquired how long Mr. Boffin thought it might take him to turn himself round?

“I am sure I don’t know,” was the answer, given quite at a loss. “Everything is so at sixes and sevens. If I had never come into the property, I shouldn’t have minded. But being in it, it would be very trying to be turned out; now, don’t you acknowledge that it would, Venus?”

Mr. Venus preferred, he said, to leave Mr. Boffin to arrive at his own conclusions on that delicate question.