The effect of the poem on the Secretary being evidently to astonish him, Mr. Boffin was confirmed in his high opinion of it, and was greatly pleased.
“Now, you see, Rokesmith,” he went on, “a literary man— with a wooden leg—is liable to jealousy. I shall therefore cast about for comfortable ways and means of not calling up Wegg’s jealousy, but of keeping you in your department, and keeping him in his.”
“Lor!” cried Mrs. Boffin. “What I say is, the world’s wide enough for all of us!”
“So it is, my dear,” said Mr. Boffin, “when not literary. But when so, not so. And I am bound to bear in mind that I took Wegg on, at a time when I had no thought of being fashionable or of leaving the Bower. To let him feel himself anyways slighted now, would be to be guilty of a meanness, and to act like having one’s head turned by the halls of