‘And as if his money had turned bright again, after a long long rust in the dark, and was at last a beginning to sparkle in the sunlight?’
‘Yes, old lady.’
‘And it makes a pretty and a promising picter; don’t it?’
‘Yes, old lady.’
But, aware at the instant of a fine opening for a point, Mr Boffin quenched that observation in this—delivered in the grisliest growling of the regular brown bear. ‘A pretty and a hopeful picter? Mew, Quack quack, Bow-wow!’ And then trotted silently downstairs, with his shoulders in a state of the liveliest commotion.
Chapter 14
CHECKMATE TO THE FRIENDLY MOVE
Mr and Mrs John Harmon had so timed their taking possession of their rightful name and their London house, that the event befell 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?