t. I don't call to mind that I have
anything more to say at the present moment.'

The Secretary rose, gathered up his papers, and withdrew. Bella's eyes
followed him to the door, lighted on Mr Boffin complacently thrown back
in his easy chair, and drooped over her book.

'I have let that chap, that young man of mine,' said Mr Boffin, taking a
trot up and down the room, get above his work. It won't do. I must have
him down a peg. A man of property owes a duty to other men of property,
and must look sharp after his inferiors.'

Bella felt that Mrs Boffin was not comfortable, and that the eyes of
that good creature sought to discover from her face what attention she
had given to this discourse, and what impression it had made upon her.
For which reason Bella's eyes drooped more engrossedly over her book,
and she turned the page with an air of profound absorption in it.

'Noddy,' said Mrs Boffin, after thoughtfully pausing in her work.

'My dear,' returned the Golden Dustman, stopping short in his trot.

'Excuse my putting it to you, Noddy, but now really! Haven't you been
a little strict with Mr Rokesmith to-night? Haven't you been a
little--just a little little--not quite like your old self?'

'Why, old woman, I hope so,' returned Mr Boffin, cheerfully, if not
boastfully.

'Hope so, deary?'

'Our old selves wouldn't do here, old lady. Haven't you found that out
yet? Our old selves would be fit for nothing here but to be robbed and
imposed upon. Our old selves weren't people of fortune; our new selves
are; it's a great difference.'

'Ah!' said Mrs Boffin, pausing in her work again, softly to draw a long
breath and to look at the fire. 'A great difference.'

'And we must be up to the difference,' pursued her husband; 'we must be
equal to the change; that's what we must be. We've got to hold our own
now, against everybody (for everybody's hand is stretched out to be
dipped into our pockets), and we have got to recollect that money makes
money, as well as makes everything else.'

'Mentioning recollecting,' said Mrs Boffin, with her work abandoned,
her eyes upon the fire, and her chin upon her hand, 'do you recollect,
Noddy, how you said to Mr Rokesmith when he first came to see us at the
Bower, and you engaged him--how you said to him that if it had pleased
Heaven to send John Harmon to his fortune safe, we could have been
content with the one Mound which was our legacy, and should never have
wanted the rest?'