“I am sure I don’t know what to do,” said Mr. Boffin. “If I ask advice of anyone else, it’s only letting in another person to be bought out, and then I shall be ruined that way, and might as well have given up the property and gone slap to the workhouse. If I was to take advice of my young man, Rokesmith, I should have to buy him out. Sooner or later, of course, he’d drop down upon me, like Wegg. I was brought into the world to be dropped down upon, it appears to me.”

Mr. Venus listened to these lamentations in silence, while Mr. Boffin jogged to and fro, holding his pockets as if he had a pain in them.

“After all, you haven’t said what you mean to do yourself, Venus. When you do go out of it, how do you mean to go?”