‘How brisk we are!’ said Wegg. ‘You won’t run so gaily to your old shabby home, my girl. You’ll have to go there, though.’
A little while, and the Secretary came out.
‘I was passed over for you,’ said Wegg. ‘But you had better provide yourself with another situation, young man.’
Mr Boffin’s shadow passed upon the blinds of three large windows as he trotted down the room, and passed again as he went back.
‘Yoop!’ cried Wegg. ‘You’re there, are you? Where’s the bottle? You would give your bottle for my box, Dustman!’
Having now composed his mind for slumber, he turned homeward. Such was the greed of the fellow, that his mind had shot beyond halves, two-thirds, three-fourths, and gone straight to spoliation of the whole. ‘Though that wouldn’t quite do,’ he considered, growing cooler as he got away. ‘That’s what would happen to him if he didn’t buy us up. We should get nothing by that.’
We so judge others by ourselves, that it had never come into his head before, that he might not buy us up, and might prove honest, and prefer to be poor. It caused him a slight tremor as it passed; but a very slight one, for the idle thought was gone directly.
‘He’s grown too fond of money for that,’ said Wegg; ‘he’s grown too fond of money.’ The burden fell into a strain or tune as he stumped along the pavements. All the way home he stumped it out of the rattling streets, piano with his own foot, and forte with his wooden leg, ‘He’s grown too fond of money for that, he’s grown too fond of money.’
Even next day Silas soothed himself with this melodious strain, when he was called out of bed at daybreak, to set open the yard-gate and admit the train of carts and horses that came to carry off the little Mound. And all day long, as he kept unwinking watch on the slow process which promised to protract itself through many days and weeks, whenever (to save himself from being choked with dust) he patrolled a little cinderous beat he established for the purpose, without taking his eyes from the diggers, he still stumped to the tune: He’s grown too fond of money for that, he’s grown too fond of money.’