Having so held and waved the candle as that all these heterogeneous objects seemed to come forward obediently when they were named, and then retire again, Mr Venus despondently repeats, ‘Oh dear me, dear me!’ resumes his seat, and with drooping despondency upon him, falls to pouring himself out more tea.
‘Where am I?’ asks Mr Wegg.
‘You’re somewhere in the back shop across the yard, sir; and speaking quite candidly, I wish I’d never bought you of the Hospital Porter.’
‘Now, look here, what did you give for me?’
‘Well,’ replies Venus, blowing his tea: his head and face peering out of the darkness, over the smoke of it, as if he were modernizing the old original rise in his family: ‘you were one of a warious lot, and I don’t know.’
Silas puts his point in the improved form of ‘What will you take for me?’
‘Well,’ replies Venus, still blowing his tea, ‘I’m not prepared, at a moment’s notice, to tell you, Mr Wegg.’
‘Come! According to your own account I’m not worth much,’ Wegg reasons persuasively.
‘Not for miscellaneous working in, I grant you, Mr Wegg; but you might turn out valuable yet, as a—’ here Mr Venus takes a gulp of tea, so hot that it makes him choke, and sets his weak eyes watering; ‘as a Monstrosity, if you’ll excuse me.’
Repressing an indignant look, indicative of anything but a disposition to excuse him, Silas pursues his point.