“Suppose he says nothing, Mr. Wegg?”
“Then,” replied Wegg, “we shall have come to an understanding with very little trouble, and I’ll break him and drive him, Mr. Venus. I’ll put him in harness, and I’ll bear him up tight, and I’ll break him and drive him. The harder the old Dust is driven, sir, the higher he’ll pay. And I mean to be paid high, Mr. Venus, I promise you.”
“You speak quite revengefully, Mr. Wegg.”
“Revengefully, sir? Is it for him that I have declined and falled, night after night? Is it for his pleasure that I’ve waited at home of an evening, like a set of skittles, to be set up and knocked over, set up and knocked over, by whatever balls—or books—he chose to bring against me? Why, I’m a hundred times the man he is, sir; five hundred times!”
Perhaps it was with the malicious intent of urging him on to his worst that Mr. Venus looked as if he doubted that.
“What? Was it outside the house at present ockypied, to its disgrace, by that minion of fortune and worm of the hour,” said Wegg, falling back upon his strongest terms of reprobation, and slapping the counter, “that I, Silas Wegg, five hundred times the man he ever was, sat in all weathers, waiting for a errand or a customer? Was it outside that very house as I first set eyes upon him, rolling in the lap of luxury, when I was selling halfpenny ballads there for a living? And am I to grovel in the dust for him to walk over? No!”
There was a grin upon the ghastly countenance of the French gentleman under the influence of the firelight, as if he were computing how many thousand slanderers and traitors array themselves against the