Tales from Dickens

by Hallie Erminie Rives; Charles Dickens

The Golden Dustman began the new plan that very night. Every day he made himself act like a regular brown bear, and every evening he would say, "I'll be a grislier old growler to-morrow." He made the secretary slave from morning till night and found fault with him and sneered at his poverty and cut down his wages.

Each afternoon, when he went walking with Bella, Mr. Boffin would make her go into bookshops and inquire if they had any book about a miser. If they had, he would buy it, no matter what it cost, and lug it home to read. He began to drive hard bargains for everything he bought and all his talk came to be about money and the fine thing it was to have it.

"Go in for money, my dear," he would say to Bella. "Money's the article! You'll make money of your good looks, and of the money Mrs. Boffin and me will leave you, and you'll live and die rich. That's the state to live and die in—R-r-rich!"

Bella was greatly shocked at the sorrowful change in Mr. Boffin. Wealth began to look less lovely when she saw him growing so miserly. She began to wonder if she herself might ever become like that, too, and sometimes, when she thought how kind and generous the old Mr. Boffin had been, she fairly hated money and wished it had never been invented.

There was an old woman who peddled knitting-work through the country whom Mr. and Mrs. Boffin had befriended, and to whom they had given a letter to carry wherever she went. This letter asked whoever should find her, if she fell sick, to let them know. The old woman fell and died one day by the roadside near the spot where Lizzie Hexam was now living, and Lizzie, finding the letter, wrote about it to Mr. and Mrs. Boffin.

They sent the secretary and Bella, to make arrangements for the poor woman's burial, and in this way Bella met Lizzie and became her friend. Lizzie soon told her all her story, and Bella, seeing how unselfishly she loved, began to think her own ambition to marry for money a mean and ignoble thing. She thought how patient and kind the secretary had always been, and, knowing he loved her, wished heartily that her own coldness had not forbidden him to tell her so.

One day Mr. Boffin's pretended harsh treatment of his secretary seemed to come to a climax. He sent for him to come to the room where Mrs. Boffin and Bella sat, and made a fearful scene. He said he had just heard that he, Rokesmith, had been presuming on his position to make love to Bella—a young lady who wanted to marry money, who had a right to marry money, and who was very far from wanting to marry a poor beggar of a private secretary! He threw the wages that were due Rokesmith on the floor and discharged him on the spot, telling him the sooner he could pack up and leave, the better.

Then, at last, in the face of this apparent meanness and injustice, Bella saw herself and Mr. Boffin's money and John Rokesmith's love and dignity, all in their true light. She burst out crying, begged Rokesmith's forgiveness, told Mr. Boffin he was an old wretch of a miser, and when the secretary had gone, she said Rokesmith was a gentleman and worth a million Boffins, and she would not stay in the house a minute longer.

Then she packed up her things and went straight to her father's office. All the other clerks had gone home, for it was after hours, and she put her head on his shoulder and told him all about it.

And while they were talking, in came John Rokesmith, and seeing her there alone with her father, rushed to her and caught her in his arms.