“Something against him?” repeats Wegg. “Something? What would the relief be to my feelings⁠—as a fellow-man⁠—if I wasn’t the slave of truth, and didn’t feel myself compelled to answer, Everything!”

See into what wonderful maudlin refuges, featherless ostriches plunge their heads! It is such unspeakable moral compensation to Wegg, to be overcome by the consideration that Mr. Rokesmith has an underhanded mind!

“On this starlight night, Mr. Venus,” he remarks, when he is showing that friendly mover out across the yard, and both are something the worse for mixing again and again: “on this starlight night to think that talking-over strangers, and underhanded minds, can go walking home under the sky, as if they was all square!”