never had the heart to prepare
it, and I never shall have now.'

With a disappointed face, Silas mentally consigned this parrot to
regions more than tropical, and, seeming for the time to have lost
his power of assuming an interest in the woes of Mr Venus, fell to
tightening his wooden leg as a preparation for departure: its gymnastic
performances of that evening having severely tried its constitution.

After Silas had left the shop, hat-box in hand, and had left Mr Venus
to lower himself to oblivion-point with the requisite weight of tea, it
greatly preyed on his ingenuous mind that he had taken this artist into
partnership at all. He bitterly felt that he had overreached himself in
the beginning, by grasping at Mr Venus's mere straws of hints, now shown
to be worthless for his purpose. Casting about for ways and means of
dissolving the connexion without loss of money, reproaching himself for
having been betrayed into an avowal of his secret, and complimenting
himself beyond measure on his purely accidental good luck, he beguiled
the distance between Clerkenwell and the mansion of the Golden Dustman.

For, Silas Wegg felt it to be quite out of the question that he could
lay his head upon his pillow in peace, without first hovering over
Mr Boffin's house in the superior character of its Evil Genius. Power
(unless it be the power of intellect or virtue) has ever the greatest
attraction for the lowest natures; and the mere defiance of the
unconscious house-front, with his power to strip the roof off the
inhabiting family like the roof of a house of cards, was a treat which
had a charm for Silas Wegg.

As he hovered on the opposite side of the street, exulting, the carriage
drove up.

'There'll shortly be an end of YOU,' said Wegg, threatening it with the
hat-box. 'YOUR varnish is fading.'

Mrs Boffin descended and went in.

'Look out for a fall, my Lady Dustwoman,' said Wegg.

Bella lightly descended, and ran in after her.

'How brisk we are!' said Wegg. 'You won't run so gaily to your old
shabby home, my girl. You'll have to go there, though.'

A little while, and the Secretary came out.

'I was passed over for you,' said Wegg. 'But you had better provide
yourself with another situation, young man.'

Mr Boffin's shadow passed upon the blinds of three large windows as he
trotted down the room, and passed again as he went back.

'Yoop!' cried Wegg. 'You're there, are you? Where's the bottle? You
would give