and won’t go down with me . I’m a-going to unfold your plan, before this young lady; I’m a-going to show this young lady the second view of you; and nothing you can say will stave it off. (Now, attend here, Bella, my dear.) Rokesmith, you’re a needy chap. You’re a chap that I pick up in the street. Are you, or ain’t you?”
“Go on, Mr. Boffin; don’t appeal to me.”
“Not appeal to you ,” retorted Mr. Boffin as if he hadn’t done so. “No, I should hope not! Appealing to you , would be rather a rum course. As I was saying, you’re a needy chap that I pick up in the street. You come and ask me in the street to take you for a Secretary, and I take you. Very good.”
“Very bad,” murmured the Secretary.
“What do you say?” asked Mr. Boffin, snapping at him again.
He returned no answer. Mr. Boffin, after eyeing him with a comical look of discomfited curiosity, was fain to begin afresh.
“This Rokesmith is a needy young man that I take for my Secretary out of the open street. This Rokesmith gets acquainted with my affairs, and gets to know that I mean to settle a sum of money on this young lady. ‘Oho!’ says this Rokesmith;” here Mr. Boffin clapped a finger against his nose, and tapped it several times with a sneaking air, as embodying Rokesmith confidentially confabulating with his own nose; “ ‘This will be a good haul; I’ll go in for this!’ And so this Rokesmith, greedy and hungering, begins a-creeping on his hands and knees towards the money. Not so bad a speculation either: for if this young lady had had less spirit, or had had less sense, through being at all in the romantic line, by George he might have worked it out and made it pay! But fortunately she was too many for him, and a pretty figure he cuts now he is exposed. There he stands!” said Mr. Boffin, addressing Rokesmith himself with ridiculous inconsistency. “Look at him!”