“Now, scoundrel,” he pursued, “I am going to finish. You supposed me just now, to be the possessor of my father’s property.⁠—So I am. But through any act of my father’s, or by any right I have? No. Through the munificence of Mr. Boffin. The conditions that he made with me, before parting with the secret of the Dutch bottle, were, that I should take the fortune, and that he should take his Mound and no more. I owe everything I possess, solely to the disinterestedness, uprightness, tenderness, goodness (there are no words to satisfy me) of Mr. and Mrs. Boffin. And when, knowing what I knew, I saw such a mud-worm as you presume to rise in this house against this noble soul, the wonder is,” added John Harmon through his clenched teeth, and with a very ugly turn indeed on Wegg’s cravat, “that I didn’t try to twist your head off, and fling that out of window! So. That’s the last short speech, do you understand?”