I have more friends than one, sir, I hope,' replied Miss Wren. 'Which
friend?'

'Never mind,' said Mr Fledgeby, shutting up one eye, 'any of your
friends, all your friends. Are they pretty tolerable?'

Somewhat confounded, Miss Wren parried the pleasantry, and sat down in a
corner behind the door, with her basket in her lap. By-and-by, she said,
breaking a long and patient silence:

'I beg your pardon, sir, but I am used to find Mr Riah at this time, and
so I generally come at this time. I only want to buy my poor little two
shillings' worth of waste. Perhaps you'll kindly let me have it, and
I'll trot off to my work.'

'I let you have it?' said Fledgeby, turning his head towards her; for he
had been sitting blinking at the light, and feeling his cheek. 'Why, you
don't really suppose that I have anything to do with the place, or the
business; do you?'

'Suppose?' exclaimed Miss Wren. 'He said, that day, you were the
master!'

'The old cock in black said? Riah said? Why, he'd say anything.'

'Well; but you said so too,' returned Miss Wren. 'Or at least you took
on like the master, and didn't contradict him.'

'One of his dodges,' said Mr Fledgeby, with a cool and contemptuous
shrug. 'He's made of dodges. He said to me, "Come up to the top of the
house, sir, and I'll show you a handsome girl. But I shall call you
the master." So I went up to the top of the house and he showed me the
handsome girl (very well worth looking at she was), and I was called the
master. I don't know why. I dare say he don't. He loves a dodge for
its own sake; being,' added Mr Fledgeby, after casting about for an
expressive phrase, 'the dodgerest of all the dodgers.'

'Oh my head!' cried the dolls' dressmaker, holding it with both her
hands, as if it were cracking. 'You can't mean what you say.'

'I can, my little woman, retorted Fledgeby, 'and I do, I assure you.

This repudiation was not only an act of deliberate policy on Fledgeby's
part, in case of his being surprised by any other caller, but was also a
retort upon Miss Wren for her over-sharpness, and a pleasant instance
of his humour as regarded the old Jew. 'He has got a bad name as an old
Jew, and he is paid for the use of it, and I'll have my money's worth
out of him.' This was Fledgeby's habitual reflection in the way of
business, and it was sharpened just now by the old man's presuming
to have a secret from him: though of the secret itself, as annoying
somebody else whom he