ttle chance of this happening.

Nevertheless they believed that at heart Bella was good and sweet, if
they could only get to her real self, so Mr. Boffin that moment made a
plan.

He determined to show Bella how much unhappiness misused riches could
cause, and how too much money might sometimes spoil the kindest and
best people. As a lesson to her in this he was to pretend gradually to
turn into a mean, hard-hearted miser. They agreed that he should begin
to treat the secretary harshly and unjustly in Bella's presence, feeling
sure that her true self would stand up for him when he was slighted, and
be kinder to him when he seemed poorest and most friendless.

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