“If I give my consent to your going, Betty—which Mr. Rokesmith thinks I ought to do—”
Betty thanked him with a grateful curtsey.
“—We must not lose sight of you. We must not let you pass out of our knowledge. We must know all about you.”
“Yes, my deary, but not through letter-writing, because letter-writing—indeed, writing of most sorts hadn’t much come up for such as me when I was young. But I shall be to and fro. No fear of my missing a chance of giving myself a sight of your reviving face. Besides,” said Betty, with logical good faith, “I shall have a debt to pay off, by littles, and naturally that would bring me back, if nothing else would.”
“ Must it be done?” asked Mrs. Boffin, still reluctant, of the Secretary.
“I think it must.”
After more discussion it was agreed that it should be done, and Mrs. Boffin summoned Bella to note down the little purchases that were necessary to set Betty up in trade. “Don’t ye be timorous for me, my dear,” said the stanch old heart, observant of Bella’s face: “when I take my seat with my work, clean and busy and fresh, in a country marketplace, I shall turn a sixpence as sure as ever a farmer’s wife there.”
The Secretary took that opportunity of touching on the practical question of Mr. Sloppy’s capabilities. He would have made a wonderful cabinetmaker, said Mrs. Higden, “if there had been the money to put him to it.” She had seen him handle tools that he had borrowed to mend the mangle, or to knock a broken piece of furniture together, in a surprising manner. As to constructing toys for the Minders, out of nothing, he had done that daily. And once as many as a dozen people had got together in the lane to see the neatness with which he fitted the