The Secretary’s eyes glanced with so much meaning in them at the mounds, that Mr. Boffin said, as if in answer to a remark:

“Ay, ay, that’s another thing. I may sell them , though I should be sorry to see the neighbourhood deprived of ’em too. It’ll look but a poor dead flat without the mounds. Still I don’t say that I’m going to keep ’em always there, for the sake of the beauty of the landscape. There’s no hurry about it; that’s all I say at present. I ain’t a scholar in much, Rokesmith, but I’m a pretty fair scholar in dust. I can price the mounds to a fraction, and I know how they can be best disposed of; and likewise that they take no harm by standing where they do. You’ll look in tomorrow, will you be so kind?”

“Every day. And the sooner I can get you into your new house, complete, the better you will be pleased, sir?”