Secretary. “I dare say you can stoop to pick it up, after what you have stooped to here.”
“I have stooped to nothing but this,” Rokesmith answered as he took it from the ground; “and this is mine, for I have earned it by the hardest of hard labour.”
“You’re a pretty quick packer, I hope,” said Mr. Boffin; “because the sooner you are gone, bag and baggage, the better for all parties.”
“You need have no fear of my lingering.”
“There’s just one thing though,” said Mr. Boffin, “that I should like to ask you before we come to a good riddance, if it was only to show this young lady how conceited you schemers are, in thinking that nobody finds out how you contradict yourselves.”
“Ask me anything you wish to ask,” returned Rokesmith, “but use the expedition that you recommend.”
“You pretend to have a mighty admiration for this young lady?” said Mr. Boffin, laying his hand protectingly on Bella’s head without looking down at her.
“I do not pretend.”
“Oh! Well. You have a mighty admiration for this young lady—since you are so particular?”
“Yes.”
“How do you reconcile that, with this young lady’s being a weak-spirited, improvident idiot, not knowing what was due to herself, flinging up her money to the church-weathercocks, and racing off at a splitting pace for the workhouse?”