CHARACTERS
| Mr. Harmon | A rich dust collector |
| Mr. Boffin | Foreman of the dust business and heir to the Harmon fortune |
| Known as "The Golden Dustman" | |
| Mrs. Boffin | His wife |
| John Harmon | Mr. Harmon's son |
| Later Mr. Boffin's secretary, under the name of "John Rokesmith" | |
| Mr. Veneering | A rich man with social and political ambitions |
| Mr. Wilfer | A clerk in Mr. Veneering's office |
| Bella | His daughter |
| Silas Wegg | A one-legged ballad seller |
| "Rogue" Riderhood | A riverman of bad reputation |
| Later a lock tender | |
| Hexam | A riverman |
| Charley | His son |
| Lizzie | His daughter |
| "Jenny Wren" | A crippled friend of Lizzie's, known as "The Dolls' Dressmaker" |
| Eugene Wrayburn | A reckless young lawyer |
| Headstone | A schoolmaster |
| Mr. Venus | A dismal young man with a dismal trade—the stringing together of human skeletons on wires |
OUR MUTUAL FRIEND
I
WHAT HAPPENED TO JOHN HARMON
In London there once lived an old man named Harmon who had made a great fortune by gathering the dust and ashes of the city and sorting it for whatever it contained of value. He lived in a house surrounded by great mounds of dust that he had collected.
He was a hard-hearted man and when his daughter would not marry as he wished he turned her out of the house on a winter's night. The poor girl died soon after, and her younger brother (a boy of only fourteen), indignant at his father's cruelty, ran away to a foreign country, where for years he was not heard of.
The old man, hard-hearted as he was, and though he never spoke of the son save with anger and curses, felt this keenly, for in his own way he had loved the boy.