“Excuse my putting it to you, Noddy, but now really! Haven’t you been a little strict with Mr. Rokesmith tonight? Haven’t you been a little—just a little little—not quite like your old self?”
“Why, old woman, I hope so,” returned Mr. Boffin, cheerfully, if not boastfully.
“Hope so, deary?”
“Our old selves wouldn’t do here, old lady. Haven’t you found that out yet? Our old selves would be fit for nothing here but to be robbed and imposed upon. Our old selves weren’t people of fortune; our new selves are; it’s a great difference.”
“Ah!” said Mrs. Boffin, pausing in her work again, softly to draw a long breath and to look at the fire. “A great difference.”
“And we must be up to the difference,” pursued her husband; “we must be equal to the change; that’s what we must be. We’ve got to hold our own now, against everybody (for everybody’s hand is stretched out to be dipped into our pockets), and we have got to recollect that money makes money, as well as makes everything else.”
“Mentioning recollecting,” said Mrs. Boffin, with her work abandoned, her eyes upon the fire, and her chin upon her hand, “do you recollect, Noddy, how you said to Mr. Rokesmith when he first came to see us at the Bower, and you engaged him—how you said to him that if it had pleased Heaven to send John Harmon to his fortune safe, we could have been content with the one Mound which was our legacy, and should never have wanted the rest?”
“Ay, I remember, old lady. But we hadn’t tried what it was to have the rest then. Our new shoes had come home, but we hadn’t put ’em on. We’re wearing ’em now, we’re wearing ’em, and must step out accordingly.”