“It’s not so much saying it that I object to,” returned Mr. Venus, “as doing it. And having got to do it whether or no, I can’t afford to waste my time on groping for nothing in cinders.”
“But think how little time you have given to the move, sir, after all,” urged Wegg. “Add the evenings so occupied together, and what do they come to? And you, sir, harmonizer with myself in opinions, views, and feelings, you with the patience to fit together on wires the whole framework of society—I allude to the human skelinton—you to give in so soon!”
“I don’t like it,” returned Mr. Venus moodily, as he put his head between his knees and stuck up his dusty hair. “And there’s no encouragement to go on.”
“Not them Mounds without,” said Mr. Wegg, extending his right hand with an air of solemn reasoning, “encouragement? Not them Mounds now looking down upon us?”
“They’re too big,” grumbled Venus. “What’s a scratch here and a scrape there, a poke in this place and a dig in the other, to them. Besides; what have we found?”
“What have we found?” cried Wegg, delighted to be able to acquiesce. “Ah! There I grant you, comrade. Nothing. But on the contrary, comrade, what may we find? There you’ll grant me. Anything.”
“I don’t like it,” pettishly returned Venus as before. “I came into it without enough consideration. And besides again. Isn’t your own Mr. Boffin well acquainted with the Mounds? And wasn’t he well acquainted with the deceased and his ways? And has he ever showed any expectation of finding anything?”
At that moment wheels were heard.