‘Noddy Boffin,’ said that gentleman. ‘Noddy. That’s my name. Noddy—or Nick—Boffin. What’s your name?’
‘Silas Wegg.—I don’t,’ said Mr Wegg, bestirring himself to take the same precaution as before, ‘I don’t know why Silas, and I don’t know why Wegg.’
‘Now, Wegg,’ said Mr Boffin, hugging his stick closer, ‘I want to make a sort of offer to you. Do you remember when you first see me?’
The wooden Wegg looked at him with a meditative eye, and also with a softened air as descrying possibility of profit. ‘Let me think. I ain’t quite sure, and yet I generally take a powerful sight of notice, too. Was it on a Monday morning, when the butcher-boy had been to our house for orders, and bought a ballad of me, which, being unacquainted with the tune, I run it over to him?’
‘Right, Wegg, right! But he bought more than one.’
‘Yes, to be sure, sir; he bought several; and wishing to lay out his money to the best, he took my opinion to guide his choice, and we went over the collection together. To be sure we did. Here was him as it might be, and here was myself as it might be, and there was you, Mr Boffin, as you identically are, with your self-same stick under your very same arm, and your very same back towards us. To—be—sure!’ added Mr Wegg, looking a little round Mr Boffin, to take him in the rear, and identify this last extraordinary coincidence, ‘your wery self-same back!’
‘What do you think I was doing, Wegg?’
‘I should judge, sir, that you might be glancing your eye down the street.’
‘No, Wegg. I was a listening.’
‘Was you, indeed?’ said Mr Wegg, dubiously.