—My father got over it, Mr. Boffin, and so shall I.”
While delivering these valedictory observations, Wegg continually disappointed Mr. Boffin of his hand by flourishing it in the air. He now darted it at his patron, who took it, and felt his mind relieved of a great weight: observing that as they had arranged their joint affairs so satisfactorily, he would now be glad to look into those of Bully Sawyers. Which, indeed, had been left overnight in a very unpromising posture, and for whose impending expedition against the Persians the weather had been by no means favourable all day.
Mr. Wegg resumed his spectacles therefore. But Sawyers was not to be of the party that night; for, before Wegg had found his place, Mrs. Boffin’s tread was heard upon the stairs, so unusually heavy and hurried, that Mr. Boffin would have started up at the sound, anticipating some occurrence much out of the common course, even though she had not also called to him in an agitated tone.
Mr. Boffin hurried out, and found her on the dark staircase, panting, with a lighted candle in her hand.
“What’s the matter, my dear?”
“I don’t know; I don’t know; but I wish you’d come upstairs.”
Much surprised, Mr. Boffin went upstairs and accompanied Mrs. Boffin into their own room: a second large room on the same floor as the room in which the late proprietor had died. Mr. Boffin looked all round him, and saw nothing more unusual than various articles of folded linen on a large chest, which Mrs. Boffin had been sorting.
“What is it, my dear? Why, you’re frightened! You frightened?”
“I am not one of that sort certainly,” said Mrs. Boffin, as she sat down in a chair to recover herself, and took her husband’s arm; “but it’s very strange!”