‘Still,’ said Bella, after this meditative pause, ‘there remain two things that I cannot understand. Mrs Boffin never supposed any part of the change in Mr Boffin to be real; did she?—You never did; did you?’ asked Bella, turning to her.
‘No!’ returned Mrs Boffin, with a most rotund and glowing negative.
‘And yet you took it very much to heart,’ said Bella. ‘I remember its making you very uneasy, indeed.’
‘Ecod, you see Mrs John has a sharp eye, John!’ cried Mr Boffin, shaking his head with an admiring air. ‘You’re right, my dear. The old lady nearly blowed us into shivers and smithers, many times.’
‘Why?’ asked Bella. ‘How did that happen, when she was in your secret?’
‘Why, it was a weakness in the old lady,’ said Mr Boffin; ‘and yet, to tell you the whole truth and nothing but the truth, I’m rather proud of it. My dear, the old lady thinks so high of me that she couldn’t abear to see and hear me coming out as a reg’lar brown one. Couldn’t abear to make-believe as I meant it! In consequence of which, we was everlastingly in danger with her.’
Mrs Boffin laughed heartily at herself; but a certain glistening in her honest eyes revealed that she was by no means cured of that dangerous propensity.
‘I assure you, my dear,’ said Mr Boffin, ‘that on the celebrated day when I made what has since been agreed upon to be my grandest demonstration—I allude to Mew says the cat, Quack quack says the duck, and Bow-wow-wow says the dog—I assure you, my dear, that on that celebrated day, them flinty and unbelieving words hit my old lady so hard on my account, that I had to hold her, to prevent her running out after you, and defending me by saying I was playing a part.’
Mrs Boffin laughed heartily again, and her eyes glistened again, and it then appeared, not only that in that burst of sarcastic eloquence Mr Boffin was considered by his two fellow-conspirators to have outdone himself, but that in his own opinion it was a remarkable achievement. ‘Never thought of it afore the moment, my dear!’ he observed to Bella. ‘When John said, if he had been so happy as to win your affections and possess your heart, it come into my head to turn round upon him with “Win her affections and possess her heart! Mew says the cat, Quack quack says the duck, and Bow-wow-wow says the dog.” I couldn’t tell you how it come into my head or where from, but it had so much the sound of a rasper that I own to you it astonished myself. I was awful nigh bursting out a laughing though, when it made John stare!’
‘You said, my pretty,’ Mrs Boffin reminded Bella, ‘that there was one other thing you couldn’t understand.’