'I think,' said Rokesmith, when they all stood about her, while she packed her tidy basket — except Bella, who was busily helping on her knees at the chair on which it stood; 'that at least you might keep a letter in your pocket, Mrs Higden, which I would write for you and date from here, merely stating, in the names of Mr and Mrs Boffin, that they are your friends; — I won't say patrons, because they wouldn't like it.'
'No, no, no,' said Mr Boffin; 'no patronizing! Let's keep out of THAT, whatever we come to.'
'There's more than enough of that about, without us; ain't there, Noddy?' said Mrs Boffin.
'I believe you, old lady!' returned the Golden Dustman. 'Overmuch indeed!'
'But people sometimes like to be patronized; don't they, sir?' asked Bella, looking up.
'I don't. And if THEY do, my dear, they ought to learn better,' said Mr Boffin. 'Patrons and Patronesses, and Vice-Patrons and Vice-Patronesses, and Deceased Patrons and Deceased Patronesses, and Ex-Vice-Patrons and Ex-Vice-Patronesses, what does it all mean in the books of the Charities that come pouring in on Rokesmith as he sits among 'em pretty well up to his neck! If Mr Tom Noakes gives his five shillings ain't he a Patron, and if Mrs Jack Styles gives her five shillings ain't she a Patroness? What the deuce is it all about? If it ain't stark staring impudence, what do you call it?'
'Don't be warm, Noddy,' Mrs Boffin urged.
'Warm!' cried Mr Boffin. 'It's enough to make a man smoking hot. I can't go anywhere without being Patronized. I don't want to be Patronized. If I buy a ticket for a Flower Show, or a Music Show, or any sort of Show, and pay pretty heavy for it, why am I to be Patroned and Patronessed as if the Patrons and Patronesses treated me? If there's a good thing to be done, can't it be done on its own merits? If there's a bad thing to be done, can it ever be Patroned and Patronessed right? Yet when a new Institution's going to be built, it seems to me that the bricks and mortar ain't made of half so much consequence as the Patrons and Patronesses; no, nor yet the objects. I wish somebody would tell me whether other countries get Patronized to anything like the extent of this one! And as to the Patrons and Patronesses themselves, I wonder they're not ashamed of themselves. They ain't Pills, or Hair-Washes, or Invigorating Nervous Essences, to be puffed in that way!'
Having delivered himself of these remarks, Mr Boffin took a trot, according to his usual custom, and trotted back to the spot from which he had started.
'As to the letter, Rokesmith,' said Mr Boffin, 'you're as right as a trivet. Give her the letter, make her take the letter, put it in her pocket by violence. She might fall sick. You know you might fall sick,' said Mr Boffin. 'Don't deny it, Mrs Higden, in your obstinacy; you know you might.'
Old Betty laughed, and said that she would take the letter and be thankful.
'That's right!' said Mr Boffin. 'Come! That's sensible. And don't be thankful to us (for we never thought of it), but to Mr Rokesmith.'
The letter was written, and read to her, and given to her.
'Now, how do you feel?' said Mr Boffin. 'Do you like it?'
'The letter, sir?' said Betty. 'Ay, it's a beautiful letter!'
'No, no, no; not the letter,' said Mr Boffin; 'the idea. Are you sure you're strong enough to carry out the idea?'
'I shall be stronger, and keep the deadness off better, this way, than any way left open to me, sir.'
'Don't say than any way left open, you know,' urged Mr Boffin; 'because there are ways without end. A housekeeper would be acceptable over yonder at the Bower, for instance. Wouldn't you like to see the Bower, and know a retired literary man of the name of Wegg that lives there — WITH a wooden leg?'
Old Betty was proof even against this temptation, and fell to adjusting her black bonnet and shawl.
'I wouldn't let you go, now it comes to this, after all,' said Mr Boffin, 'if I didn't hope that it may make a man and a workman of Sloppy, in as short a time as ever a man and workman was made yet. Why, what have you got there, Betty? Not a doll?'
It was the man in the Guards who had been on duty over Johnny's bed. The solitary old woman showed what it was, and put it up quietly in her dress. Then, she gratefully took leave of Mrs Boffin, and of Mr Boffin, and of Rokesmith, and then put her old withered arms round Bella's young and blooming neck, and said, repeating Johnny's words: 'A kiss for the boofer lady.'
The Secretary looked on from a doorway at the boofer lady thus encircled, and still looked on at the boofer lady standing alone there, when the determined old figure with its steady bright eyes was trudging through the streets, away from paralysis and pauperism.
Chapter 15
The Whole Case So Far
Bradley Headstone held fast by that other interview he was to have with Lizzie Hexam. In stipulating for it, he had been impelled by a feeling little short of desperation, and the feeling abided by him. It was very soon after his interview with the Secretary, that he and Charley Hexam set out one leaden evening, not unnoticed by Miss Peecher, to have this desperate interview accomplished.
'That dolls' dressmaker,' said Bradley, 'is favourable neither to me nor to you, Hexam.'
'A pert crooked little chit, Mr Headstone! I knew she would put herself in the way, if she could, and would be sure to strike in with something impertinent. It was on that account that I proposed our going to the City to-night and meeting my sister.'
'So I supposed,' said Bradley, getting his gloves on his nervous hands as he walked. 'So I supposed.'
'Nobody but my sister,' pursued Charley, 'would have found out such an extraordinary companion. She has done it in a ridiculous fancy of giving herself up to another. She told me so, that night when we went there.'
'Why should she give herself up to the dressmaker?' asked Bradley.
'Oh!' said the boy, colouring. 'One of her romantic ideas! I tried to convince her so, but I didn't succeed. However, what we have got to do, is, to succeed to-night, Mr Headstone, and then all the rest follows.'
'You are still sanguine, Hexam.'
'Certainly I am, sir. Why, we have everything on our side.'
'Except your sister, perhaps,' thought Bradley. But he only gloomily thought it, and said nothing.
'Everything on our side,' repeated the boy with boyish confidence. 'Respectability, an excellent connexion for me, common sense, everything!'
'To be sure, your sister has always shown herself a devoted sister,' said Bradley, willing to sustain himself on even that low ground of hope.
'Naturally, Mr Headstone, I have a good deal of influence with her. And now that you have honoured me with your confidence and spoken to me first, I say again, we have everything on our side.'
And Bradley thought again, 'Except your sister, perhaps.'
A grey dusty withered evening in London city has not a hopeful aspect. The closed warehouses and offices have an air of death about them, and the national dread of colour has an air of mourning. The towers and steeples of the many house– encompassed churches, dark and dingy as the sky that seems descending on them, are no relief to the general gloom; a sun-dial on a church-wall has the look, in its useless black shade, of having failed in its business enterprise and stopped payment for ever; melancholy waifs and strays of housekeepers and porter sweep melancholy waifs and strays of papers and pins into the kennels, and other more melancholy waifs and strays explore them, searching and stooping and poking for anything to sell. The set of humanity outward from the City is as a set of prisoners departing from gaol, and dismal Newgate seems quite as fit a stronghold for the mighty Lord Mayor as his own state-dwelling.
On such an evening, when the city grit gets into the hair and eyes and skin, and when the fallen leaves of the few unhappy city trees grind down in corners under wheels of wind, the schoolmaster and the pupil emerged upon the Leadenhall Street region, spying eastward for Lizzie. Being something too soon in their arrival, they lurked at a corner, waiting for her to appear. The best– looking among us will not look very well, lurking at a corner, and Bradley came out of that disadvantage very poorly indeed.