“It is Mr. Rokesmith. Don’t let me disturb you. I am not coming in. I have only a message for you, which I undertook to deliver on my way home to my lodgings. I was in two minds about coming beyond the gate without ringing: not knowing but you might have a dog about.”
“I wish I had,” mutters Wegg, with his back turned as he rose from his chair. “ St. ! Hush! The talking-over stranger, Mr. Venus.”
“Is that anyone I know?” inquires the staring Secretary.
“No, Mr. Rokesmith. Friend of mine. Passing the evening with me.”
“Oh! I beg his pardon. Mr. Boffin wishes you to know that he does not expect you to stay at home any evening, on the chance of his coming. It has occurred to him that he may, without intending it, have been a tie upon you. In future, if he should come without notice, he will take his chance of finding you, and it will be all the same to him if he does not. I undertook to tell you on my way. That’s all.”
With that, and “Good night,” the Secretary lowers the window, and disappears. They listen, and hear his footsteps go back to the gate, and hear the gate close after him.
“And for that individual, Mr. Venus,” remarks Wegg, when he is fully gone, “ I have been passed over! Let me ask you what you think of him?”
Apparently, Mr. Venus does not know what to think of him, for he makes sundry efforts to reply, without delivering himself of any other articulate utterance than that he has “a singular look.”
“A double look, you mean, sir,” rejoins Wegg, playing bitterly upon the word. “That’s his look. Any amount of singular look for me, but not a double look! That’s an underhanded mind, sir.”
“Do you say there’s something against him?” Venus asks.