and refreshes his business life in many pleasant and playful ways, the latest and most important of them being the transformation of Miss Skiffins into Mrs. Wemmick.

...

The district of Walworth . . . appeared to be a collection of back lanes, ditches, and little gardens, and to present the aspect of a mighty dull retirement. Wemmick's house was a little wooden cottage in the midst of plots of garden; and the top of it was cut out and painted like a battery mounted with guns.

"My own doing," said Wemmick. "Looks pretty; don't it?" I highly commended it. I think it was the smallest house I ever saw, with the queerest Gothic windows (by far the greater part of them sham), and a Gothic door, almost too small to get in at. "There's a real flag-staff, you see," said Wemmick; "and on Sundays I run up a real flag. Then look here. After I have crossed this bridge, I hoist it up, nication."

so, and cut off the commu

The bridge was a plank; and it crossed a chasm about four feet wide and two deep. But it was very pleasant to see the pride with which he hoisted it up, and made it fast; smiling, as he did so, with a relish, and not merely mechanically.

"At nine o'clock, every night, Greenwich time," said Wemmick, "the gun fires. There he is, you see; and, when you hear him go, I think you 'll say he's a stinger.”

The piece of ordnance referred to was mounted into a separate fortress lightly constructed of lattice-work. It was protected from the weather by an ingenious little tarpaulin contrivance in the nature of an umbrella.

"Then, at the back," said Wemmick, "out of sight, so as not to impede the idea of fortifications - for it's a principle with me, if you have an idea carry it out, and keep it up. I don't know whether that 's your opinion

I said, "Decidedly."

"At the back there's a pig, and there are fowls and rabbits; then I knock together my own little farm, you see, and grow cucumbers; and you'll judge at supper what sort of a salad I can raise. So, sir," said Wemmick, smiling again, but rather seriously too, "if you can suppose the little place besieged, it would hold out a devil of a time in point of provisions."

Then he conducted me to a bower about a dozen yards off, but which was approached by such ingenious twists of path, that it took quite a long time to get at; and in this retreat our glasses were already set forth. Our punch was cooling in an ornamental lake, on whose margin the bower was raised. This piece of

water (with an island in the middle, which might have been the salad for supper) was of a circular form; and he had constructed a fountain in it, which, when you set a little mill going, and took a cork out of a pipe, played to that powerful extent that it made the back of your hand quite wet.

"I am my own engineer, and my own carpenter, and my own plumber, and my own gardener, and my own 'Jack of all trades,' said Wemmick in acknowledging my compliments. "Well, it's a good thing, you know. It brushes the Newgate cobwebs away, and pleases the Aged." xx, xxi, xxiv-xxvi, xxxii, xxxvi, xxxvii, xlv, xlviii, li, lv. Wemmick, Mr., senior, called THE AGED. Mr. John Wemmick's father; a very old man, clean, cheerful, comfortable, and well cared for, but intensely deaf. xxv, xxxvii, xlv, xlviii, li, lv. Wemmick, Mrs. See SKIFFINS, MISS.

Whimple, Mrs. A lodging-house keeper at Mill Pond Bank, Chinks's Basin; an elderly woman of a pleasant and thriving appearance, who is the best of housewives. xlvi.

William. See POTKINS, WILLIAM.

Wopsle, Mr. A friend of Mrs. Joe Gargery's; at first parish clerk, afterwards an actor in London under the stage-name of Mr. Waldengarver.

Mr. Wopsle, united to a Roman nose and a large bald forehead, had a deep sonorous voice, which he was proud of; indeed, it was understood among his acquaintance, that, if you could only give him his head, he would read the clergyman into fits. He himself confessed, that if the Church was "thrown open," meaning to competition, he would not despair of making his mark in it. The Church not being "thrown open," he was, as I have said, our clerk. But he finished the amens tremendously; and when he gave out the psalm, — always giving us the whole verse, he looked all round the congregation first, as much as to say, "You have heard my friend overhead: oblige me with your opin

ion of this."

His success as an actor is not particularly brilliant or encouraging. Pip and Herbert go to the small theatre where he is engaged, to witness his impersonation of Hamlet.

Whenever that undecided prince had to ask a question or state a doubt, the public helped him out with it. As, for example, on the question, whether 't was nobler in the mind to suffer, some roared, Yes; and some, No; and some, inclining to both opinions, said, "Toss up for it;" and quite a debating society arose. When he asked what should such fellows as he do crawling between earth and heaven, he was encouraged with loud cries of, "Hear,

hear!" When he appeared with his stocking disordered (its disorder expressed, according to usage, by one very neat fold in the top, which I suppose to be always got up with a flat-iron), a conversation took place in the gallery respecting the paleness of his leg, and whether it was occasioned by the turn the ghost had given him. On his taking the recorders, very like a little black flute that had just been played in the orchestra, and handed out at the door, he was called upon, unanimously, for "Rule Britannia." When he recommended the player not to saw the air thus, the sulky man said, “And don't you do it, neither; you 're a deal worse than him!" And I grieve to add, that peals of laughter greeted Mr. Wopsle on every one of these occasions. iv-vii, x, xiii, xv, xviii, xxxi, xlvii.

Chapter
I

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND

OUTLINE

BOOK THE FIRST: THE CUP AND THE LIP.

It had been a chill autumn day, and night was just closing in, when Gaffer Hexam's shabby boat, rowed by his handsome, dark-haired daughter, with face averted, while he sat in the stern towing some object behind, touched the muddy bank of the Thames, not far from London Bridge. At almost the same hour Mr. and Mrs. Veneering —very new people in a new house, with everything new and costly about them were receiving a party of new friends at dinner, including Twemlow, a rather feeble-minded old bachelor (second cousin to Lord Snigsworth), the puzzle of whose life it was whether he, or somebody else, was Veneering's oldest friend. He had known Veneering about two weeks.

II

One of the guests at this party was Mortimer Lightwood, III a young solicitor, who, before dinner was over, was summoned by Gaffer Hexam's boy to look at the object which Gaffer had towed ashore. Another of the guests, his friend Eugene Wrayburn, a briefless young barrister, went with him. The body was identified by Lightwood by the papers found upon it, as that of Mr. John Harmon, a young man who had lately returned from abroad with £700 in his pocket, and the same man - as Lightwood had just been relating to whom a fortune had recently been left by his father, an old Dustman, on condition that he married a certain young woman. A mysterious stranger, one Julius Handford, viewed the body with much agitation, but failed to identify it.

IV

The young woman in question was Bella Wilfer, a very handsome, spoiled child, the daughter of R. Wilfer, a cherubic, middle-aged clerk in Mr. Veneering's drug house. He was too modest to make use of his full name, which was the fine one Reginald; and he was known to his intimates as Rumty. At this juncture the Wilfers took in a lodger, Mr. John Rokesmith, a handsome young man, between whom and Miss Bella Wilfer, as the young lady declared after their first meeting, "there is a natural an

V

tipathy and a deep distrust." Young Harmon being dead, the property was inherited by Nick Boffin, of Boffin's Bower, an

old gentleman who had served the elder Harmon faithfully for many years; and who now took life easy. Being unable to read, he hired one Silas Wegg, a crafty rascal with a wooden leg, who kept an apple stand, to read to him, six nights a week, at a crown per week. "Half a crown," said Wegg, meditating. "Yes. (It ain't much, sir.) Half a crown!"

"Per week, you know."

"Per week. Yes. As to the amount of strain upon the intellect now. Was you thinking at all of poetry?" Mr. Wegg inquired, musing.

"Would it come dearer?" Mr. Boffin asked.

"It would come dearer," Mr. Wegg returned; "for, when a person comes to grind off poetry night after night, it is but right he should expect to be paid for its weakening effect on his mind."

"To tell you the truth, Wegg," said Boffin, "I was n't thinking of poetry, except in so far as this: if you was to happen now and then to feel yourself in the mind to tip me and Mrs. Boffin one of your ballads, why, then, we should drop into poetry."

"I follow you, sir," said Wegg; "but, not being a regular musical professional, I should be loath to engage myself for that; and therefore, when I dropped into poetry, I should ask to be considered so fur in the light of a friend."

At this Mr. Boffin's eyes sparkled; and he shook Silas earnestly by the hand, protesting that it was more than he could have asked, and that he took it very kindly indeed.

"What do you think of the terms, Wegg?" Mr. Boffin then demanded with unconcealed anxiety.

Silas, who had stimulated this anxiety by his hard reserve of manner, and who had begun to understand his man very well, replied, with an air as if he was saying something extraordinarily generous and great : —

"Mr. Boffin, I never bargain."

"So I should have thought of you," said Mr. Boffin admiringly. "No, sir, I never did 'aggle, and I never will 'aggle. Consequently I meet you at once, free and fair, with: Done for double the money!"

Mr. Boffin seemed a little unprepared for this conclusion, but assented, with the remark, "You know better what it ought to be than I do, Wegg," and again shook hands with him upon it. "Could you begin to-night, Wegg?" he then demanded.

66

"Yes, sir," said Mr. Wegg, careful to leave all the eagerness to him. "I see no difficulty if you wish it. You are provided with the needful implement, -a book, sir?"

"Bought him at a sale," said Mr. Boffin. "Eight wollumes.