“Have you just come, Sloppy?”
“Yes, mum.”
“Then you have not had your dinner yet?”
“No, mum. But I mean to it. For I ain’t forgotten your handsome orders that I was never to go away without having had a good ’un off of meat and beer and pudding—no: there was four of ’em, for I reckoned ’em up when I had ’em; meat one, beer two, vegetables three, and which was four?—Why, pudding, he was four!” Here Sloppy threw his head back, opened his mouth wide, and laughed rapturously.
“How are the two poor little Minders?” asked Mrs. Boffin.
“Striking right out, mum, and coming round beautiful.”
Mrs. Boffin looked on the other three members of Council, and then said, beckoning with her finger:
“Sloppy.”
“Yes, mum.”
“Come forward, Sloppy. Should you like to dine here every day?”
“Off of all four on ’em, mum? O mum!” Sloppy’s feelings obliged him to squeeze his hat, and contract one leg at the knee.
“Yes. And should you like to be always taken care of here, if you were industrious and deserving?”
“Oh, mum!—But there’s Mrs. Higden,” said Sloppy, checking himself in his raptures, drawing back, and shaking his head with very serious meaning. “There’s Mrs. Higden. Mrs. Higden goes before all. None can ever be better friends to me than Mrs. Higden’s been. And she