“Ay, ay, that’s another thing. I may sell them , though I should be sorry to see the neighbourhood deprived of ’em too. It’ll look but a poor dead flat without the mounds. Still I don’t say that I’m going to keep ’em always there, for the sake of the beauty of the landscape. There’s no hurry about it; that’s all I say at present. I ain’t a scholar in much, Rokesmith, but I’m a pretty fair scholar in dust. I can price the mounds to a fraction, and I know how they can be best disposed of; and likewise that they take no harm by standing where they do. You’ll look in tomorrow, will you be so kind?”
“Every day. And the sooner I can get you into your new house, complete, the better you will be pleased, sir?”
“Well, it ain’t that I’m in a mortal hurry,” said Mr. Boffin; “only when you do pay people for looking alive, it’s as well to know that they are looking alive. Ain’t that your opinion?”
“Quite!” replied the Secretary; and so withdrew.
“Now,” said Mr. Boffin to himself; subsiding into his regular series of turns in the yard, “if I can make it comfortable with Wegg, my affairs will be going smooth.”
The man of low cunning had, of course, acquired a mastery over the man of high simplicity. The mean man had, of course, got the better of the generous man. How long such conquests last, is another matter; that they are achieved, is everyday experience, not even to be flourished away by Podsnappery itself. The undesigning Boffin had become so far immeshed by the wily Wegg that his mind misgave him he was a very designing man indeed in purposing to do more for Wegg. It seemed to him (so skilful was Wegg) that he was plotting darkly, when he was contriving to do the very thing that Wegg was plotting to get him to do. And thus, while he was mentally turning the kindest of kind faces on Wegg this morning, he was not absolutely sure but that he might somehow deserve the charge of turning his back on him.