Mr and Mrs John Harmon had so timed their taking possession of their rightful name and their London house, that the event befel on the very day when the last waggon-load of the last Mound was driven out at the gates of Boffin’s Bower. As it jolted away, Mr Wegg felt that the last load was correspondingly removed from his mind, and hailed the auspicious season when that black sheep, Boffin, was to be closely sheared.

Over the whole slow process of levelling the Mounds, Silas had kept watch with rapacious eyes. But, eyes no less rapacious had watched the growth of the Mounds in years bygone, and had vigilantly sifted the dust of which they were composed. No valuables turned up. How should there be any, seeing that the old hard jailer of Harmony Jail had coined every waif and stray into money, long before?

Though disappointed by this bare result, Mr Wegg felt too sensibly relieved by the close of the labour, to grumble to any great extent. A foreman-representative of the dust contractors, purchasers of the Mounds, had worn Mr Wegg down to skin and bone. This supervisor of the proceedings, asserting his employers’ rights to cart off by daylight, nightlight, torchlight, when they would, must have been the death of Silas if the work had lasted much longer. Seeming never to need sleep himself, he would reappear, with a tied-up broken head, in fantail hat and velveteen smalls, like an accursed goblin, at the most unholy and untimely hours. Tired out by keeping close ward over a long day’s work in fog and rain, Silas would have just crawled to bed and be dozing, when a horrid shake and rumble under his pillow would announce an approaching train of carts, escorted by this Demon of Unrest, to fall to work again. At another time, he would be rumbled up out of his soundest sleep, in the dead of the night; at another, would be kept at his post eight-and-forty hours on end. The more his persecutor besought him not to trouble himself to turn out, the more suspicious was the crafty Wegg that indications had been observed of something hidden somewhere, and that attempts were on foot to circumvent him. So continually broken was his rest through these means, that he led the life of having wagered to keep ten thousand dog-watches in ten thousand hours, and looked piteously upon himself as always getting up and yet never going to bed. So gaunt and haggard had he grown at last, that his wooden leg showed disproportionate, and presented a thriving appearance in contrast with the rest of his plagued body, which might almost have been termed chubby.

However, Wegg’s comfort was, that all his disagreeables were now over, and that he was immediately coming into his property. Of late, the grindstone did undoubtedly appear to have been whirling at his own nose rather than Boffin’s, but Boffin’s nose was now to be sharpened fine. Thus far, Mr Wegg had let his dusty friend off lightly, having been baulked in that amiable design of frequently dining with him, by the machinations of the sleepless dustman. He had been constrained to depute Mr Venus to keep their dusty friend, Boffin, under inspection, while he himself turned lank and lean at the Bower.

To Mr Venus’s museum Mr Wegg repaired when at length the Mounds were down and gone. It being evening, he found that gentleman, as he expected, seated over his fire; but did not find him, as he expected, floating his powerful mind in tea.

‘Why, you smell rather comfortable here!’ said Wegg, seeming to take it ill, and stopping and sniffing as he entered.

‘I AM rather comfortable, sir,’ said Venus.

‘You don’t use lemon in your business, do you?’ asked Wegg, sniffing again.

‘No, Mr Wegg,’ said Venus. ‘When I use it at all, I mostly use it in cobblers’ punch.’

‘What do you call cobblers’ punch?’ demanded Wegg, in a worse humour than before.

‘It’s difficult to impart the receipt for it, sir,’ returned Venus, ‘because, however particular you may be in allotting your materials, so much will still depend upon the individual gifts, and there being a feeling thrown into it. But the groundwork is gin.’

‘In a Dutch bottle?’ said Wegg gloomily, as he sat himself down.

‘Very good, sir, very good!’ cried Venus. ‘Will you partake, sir?’

‘Will I partake?’ returned Wegg very surlily. ‘Why, of course I will! WILL a man partake, as has been tormented out of his five senses by an everlasting dustman with his head tied up! WILL he, too! As if he wouldn’t!’

‘Don’t let it put you out, Mr Wegg. You don’t seem in your usual spirits.’

‘If you come to that, you don’t seem in your usual spirits,’ growled Wegg. ‘You seem to be setting up for lively.’

This circumstance appeared, in his then state of mind, to give Mr Wegg uncommon offence.

‘And you’ve been having your hair cut!’ said Wegg, missing the usual dusty shock.

‘Yes, Mr Wegg. But don’t let that put you out, either.’

‘And I am blest if you ain’t getting fat!’ said Wegg, with culminating discontent. ‘What are you going to do next?’

‘Well, Mr Wegg,’ said Venus, smiling in a sprightly manner, ‘I suspect you could hardly guess what I am going to do next.’

‘I don’t want to guess,’ retorted Wegg. ‘All I’ve got to say is, that it’s well for you that the diwision of labour has been what it has been. It’s well for you to have had so light a part in this business, when mine has been so heavy. You haven’t had YOUR rest broke, I’ll be bound.’

‘Not at all, sir,’ said Venus. ‘Never rested so well in all my life, I thank you.’

‘Ah!’ grumbled Wegg, ‘you should have been me. If you had been me, and had been fretted out of your bed, and your sleep, and your meals, and your mind, for a stretch of months together, you’d have been out of condition and out of sorts.’

‘Certainly, it has trained you down, Mr Wegg,’ said Venus, contemplating his figure with an artist’s eye. ‘Trained you down very low, it has! So weazen and yellow is the kivering upon your bones, that one might almost fancy you had come to give a look-in upon the French gentleman in the corner, instead of me.’

Mr Wegg, glancing in great dudgeon towards the French gentleman’s corner, seemed to notice something new there, which induced him to glance at the opposite corner, and then to put on his glasses and stare at all the nooks and corners of the dim shop in succession.

‘Why, you’ve been having the place cleaned up!’ he exclaimed.

‘Yes, Mr Wegg. By the hand of adorable woman.’

‘Then what you’re going to do next, I suppose, is to get married?’

‘That’s it, sir.’

Silas took off his glasses again — finding himself too intensely disgusted by the sprightly appearance of his friend and partner to bear a magnified view of him and made the inquiry:

‘To the old party?’

‘Mr Wegg!’ said Venus, with a sudden flush of wrath. ‘The lady in question is not a old party.’

‘I meant,’ exclaimed Wegg, testily, ‘to the party as formerly objected?’

‘Mr Wegg,’ said Venus, ‘in a case of so much delicacy, I must trouble you to say what you mean. There are strings that must not be played upon. No sir! Not sounded, unless in the most respectful and tuneful manner. Of such melodious strings is Miss Pleasant Riderhood formed.’

‘Then it IS the lady as formerly objected?’ said Wegg.

‘Sir,’ returned Venus with dignity, ‘I accept the altered phrase. It is the lady as formerly objected.’

‘When is it to come off?’ asked Silas.

‘Mr Wegg,’ said Venus, with another flush. ‘I cannot permit it to be put in the form of a Fight. I must temperately but firmly call upon you, sir, to amend that question.’

‘When is the lady,’ Wegg reluctantly demanded, constraining his ill temper in remembrance of the partnership and its stock in trade, ‘a going to give her ‘and where she has already given her ‘art?’

‘Sir,’ returned Venus, ‘I again accept the altered phrase, and with pleasure. The lady is a going to give her ‘and where she has already given her ‘art, next Monday.’

‘Then the lady’s objection has been met?’ said Silas.

‘Mr Wegg,’ said Venus, ‘as I did name to you, I think, on a former occasion, if not on former occasions —’

‘On former occasions,’ interrupted Wegg.

‘— What,’ pursued Venus, ‘what the nature of the lady’s objection was, I may impart, without violating any of the tender confidences since sprung up between the lady and myself, how it has been met, through the kind interference of two good friends of mine: one, previously acquainted with the lady: and one, not. The pint was thrown out, sir, by those two friends when they did me the great service of waiting on the lady to try if a union betwixt the lady and me could not be brought to bear — the pint, I say, was thrown out by them, sir, whether if, after marriage, I confined myself to the articulation of men, children, and the lower animals, it might not relieve the lady’s mind of her feeling respecting being as a lady — regarded in a bony light. It was a happy thought, sir, and it took root.’

‘It would seem, Mr Venus,’ observed Wegg, with a touch of distrust, ‘that you are flush of friends?’

‘Pretty well, sir,’ that gentleman answered, in a tone of placid mystery. ‘So-so, sir. Pretty well.’

‘However,’ said Wegg, after eyeing him with another touch of distrust, ‘I wish you joy. One man spends his fortune in one way, and another in another. You are going to try matrimony. I mean to try travelling.’

‘Indeed, Mr Wegg?’

‘Change of air, sea-scenery, and my natural rest, I hope may bring me round after the persecutions I have undergone from the dustman with his head tied up, which I just now mentioned. The tough job being ended and the Mounds laid low, the hour is come for Boffin to stump up. Would ten to-morrow morning suit you, partner, for finally bringing Boffin’s nose to the grindstone?’

Ten to-morrow morning would quite suit Mr Venus for that excellent purpose.

‘You have had him well under inspection, I hope?’ said Silas.

Mr Venus had had him under inspection pretty well every day.

‘Suppose you was just to step round to-night then, and give him orders from me — I say from me, because he knows I won’t be played with — to be ready with his papers, his accounts, and his cash, at that time in the morning?’ said Wegg. ‘And as a matter of form, which will be agreeable to your own feelings, before we go out (for I’ll walk with you part of the way, though my leg gives under me with weariness), let’s have a look at the stock in trade.’

Mr Venus produced it, and it was perfectly correct; Mr Venus undertook to produce it again in the morning, and to keep tryst with Mr Wegg on Boffin’s doorstep as the clock struck ten. At a certain point of the road between Clerkenwell and Boffin’s house (Mr Wegg expressly insisted that there should be no prefix to the Golden Dustman’s name) the partners separated for the night.

It was a very bad night; to which succeeded a very bad morning. The streets were so unusually slushy, muddy, and miserable, in the morning, that Wegg rode to the scene of action; arguing that a man who was, as it were, going to the Bank to draw out a handsome property, could well afford that trifling expense.

Venus was punctual, and Wegg undertook to knock at the door, and conduct the conference. Door knocked at. Door opened.

‘Boffin at home?’

The servant replied that MR Boffin was at home.

‘He’ll do,’ said Wegg, ‘though it ain’t what I call him.’

The servant inquired if they had any appointment?

‘Now, I tell you what, young fellow,’ said Wegg, ‘I won’t have it. This won’t do for me. I don’t want menials. I want Boffin.’

They were shown into a waiting-room, where the all-powerful Wegg wore his hat, and whistled, and with his forefinger stirred up a clock that stood upon the chimneypiece, until he made it strike. In a few minutes they were shown upstairs into what used to be Boffin’s room; which, besides the door of entrance, had foldingdoors in it, to make it one of a suite of rooms when occasion required. Here, Boffin was seated at a library-table, and here Mr Wegg, having imperiously motioned the servant to withdraw, drew up a chair and seated himself, in his hat, close beside him. Here, also, Mr Wegg instantly underwent the remarkable experience of having his hat twitched off his head and thrown out of a window, which was opened and shut for the purpose.

‘Be careful what insolent liberties you take in that gentleman’s presence,’ said the owner of the hand which had done this, ‘or I will throw you after it.’

Wegg involuntarily clapped his hand to his bare head, and stared at the Secretary. For, it was he addressed him with a severe countenance, and who had come in quietly by the folding-doors.

‘Oh!’ said Wegg, as soon as he recovered his suspended power of speech. ‘Very good! I gave directions for YOU to be dismissed. And you ain’t gone, ain’t you? Oh! We’ll look into this presently. Very good!’

‘No, nor I ain’t gone,’ said another voice.

Somebody else had come in quietly by the folding-doors. Turning his head, Wegg beheld his persecutor, the ever-wakeful dustman, accoutred with fantail hat and velveteen smalls complete. Who, untying his tied-up broken head, revealed a head that was whole, and a face that was Sloppy’s.

‘Ha, ha, ha, gentlemen!’ roared Sloppy in a peal of laughter, and with immeasureable relish. ‘He never thought as I could sleep standing, and often done it when I turned for Mrs Higden! He never thought as I used to give Mrs Higden the Police-news in different voices! But I did lead him a life all through it, gentlemen, I hope I really and truly DID!’ Here, Mr Sloppy opening his mouth to a quite alarming exten............