ng to regard himself
in quite a new light. 'Hew! This is the offer you mentioned, sir?'

'Yes. Do you like it?'

'I am considering of it, Mr Boffin.'

'I don't,' said Boffin, in a free-handed manner, 'want to tie a literary
man--WITH a wooden leg--down too tight. A halfpenny an hour shan't part
us. The hours are your own to choose, after you've done for the day
with your house here. I live over Maiden-Lane way--out Holloway
direction--and you've only got to go East-and-by-North when you've
finished here, and you're there. Twopence halfpenny an hour,' said
Boffin, taking a piece of chalk from his pocket and getting off the
stool to work the sum on the top of it in his own way; 'two long'uns and
a short'un--twopence halfpenny; two short'uns is a long'un and two two
long'uns is four long'uns--making five long'uns; six nights a week at
five long'uns a night,' scoring them all down separately, 'and you mount
up to thirty long'uns. A round'un! Half a crown!'

Pointing to this result as a large and satisfactory one, Mr Boffin
smeared it out with his moistened glove, and sat down on the remains.

'Half a crown,' said Wegg, meditating. 'Yes. (It ain't much, sir.) Half
a crown.'

'Per week, you know.'

'Per week. Yes. As to the amount of strain upon the intellect now. Was
you thinking at all of poetry?' Mr Wegg inquired, musing.

'Would it come dearer?' Mr Boffin asked.

'It would come dearer,' Mr Wegg returned. 'For when a person comes to
grind off poetry night after night, it is but right he should expect to
be paid for its weakening effect on his mind.'

'To tell you the truth Wegg,' said Boffin, 'I wasn't thinking of poetry,
except in so fur as this:--If you was to happen now and then to feel
yourself in the mind to tip me and Mrs Boffin one of your ballads, why
then we should drop into poetry.'

'I follow you, sir,' said Wegg. 'But not being a regular musical
professional, I should be loath to engage myself for that; and therefore
when I dropped into poetry, I should ask to be considered so fur, in the
light of a friend.'

At this, Mr Boffin's eyes sparkled, and he shook Silas earnestly by the
hand: protesting that it was more than he could have asked, and that he
took it very kindly indeed.

'What do you think of the terms, Wegg?' Mr Boffin then demanded, with
unconcealed anxiety.

Silas, who had stimulated this anxiety by his hard reserve of manner,
and who had begun to understand his man very well, repli