“The room was kept like this, Rokesmith,” said Mr. Boffin, “against the son’s return. In short, everything in the house was kept exactly as it came to us, for him to see and approve. Even now, nothing is changed but our own room below-stairs that you have just left. When the son came home for the last time in his life, and for the last time in his life saw his father, it was most likely in this room that they met.”
As the Secretary looked all round it, his eyes rested on a side door in a corner.
“Another staircase,” said Mr. Boffin, unlocking the door, “leading down into the yard. We’ll go down this way, as you may like to see the yard, and it’s all in the road. When the son was a little child, it was up and down these stairs that he mostly came and went to his father. He was very timid of his father. I’ve seen him sit on these stairs, in his shy way, poor child, many a time. Mr. and Mrs. Boffin have comforted him, sitting with his little book on these stairs, often.”
“Ah! And his poor sister too,” said Mrs. Boffin. “And here’s the sunny place on the white wall where they one day measured one another. Their own little hands wrote up their names here, only with a pencil; but the names are here still, and the poor dears gone forever.”
“We must take care of the names, old lady,” said Mr. Boffin. “We must take care of the names. They shan’t be rubbed out in our time, nor yet, if we can help it, in the time after us. Poor little children!”
“Ah, poor little children!” said Mrs. Boffin.