“Ah! And his poor sister too,” said Mrs. Boffin. “And here’s the sunny place on the white wall where they one day measured one another. Their own little hands wrote up their names here, only with a pencil; but the names are here still, and the poor dears gone forever.”

“We must take care of the names, old lady,” said Mr. Boffin. “We must take care of the names. They shan’t be rubbed out in our time, nor yet, if we can help it, in the time after us. Poor little children!”

“Ah, poor little children!” said Mrs. Boffin.