“Thank’ee. Being here, would you care at all to look round the Bower?”

“I should greatly like it. I have heard so much of its story.”

“Come!” said Mr. Boffin. And he and Mrs. Boffin led the way.

A gloomy house the Bower, with sordid signs on it of having been, through its long existence as Harmony Jail, in miserly holding. Bare of paint, bare of paper on the walls, bare of furniture, bare of experience of human life. Whatever is built by man for man’s occupation, must, like natural creations, fulfil the intention of its existence, or soon perish. This old house had wasted⁠—more from desuetude than it would have wasted from use, twenty years for one.