babies were equally obliging in
lending their grotesque aid to the general effect.

'You see, Mr Venus, I've lost no time,' said Mr Boffin. 'Here I am.'

'Here you are, sir,' assented Mr Venus.

'I don't like secrecy,' pursued Mr Boffin--'at least, not in a general
way I don't--but I dare say you'll show me good reason for being secret
so far.'

'I think I shall, sir,' returned Venus.

'Good,' said Mr Boffin. 'You don't expect Wegg, I take it for granted?'

'No, sir. I expect no one but the present company.'

Mr Boffin glanced about him, as accepting under that inclusive
denomination the French gentleman and the circle in which he didn't
move, and repeated, 'The present company.'

'Sir,' said Mr Venus, 'before entering upon business, I shall have to
ask you for your word and honour that we are in confidence.'

'Let's wait a bit and understand what the expression means,' answered Mr
Boffin. 'In confidence for how long? In confidence for ever and a day?'

'I take your hint, sir,' said Venus; 'you think you might consider the
business, when you came to know it, to be of a nature incompatible with
confidence on your part?'

'I might,' said Mr Boffin with a cautious look.

'True, sir. Well, sir,' observed Venus, after clutching at his dusty
hair, to brighten his ideas, 'let us put it another way. I open the
business with you, relying upon your honour not to do anything in it,
and not to mention me in it, without my knowledge.'

'That sounds fair,' said Mr Boffin. 'I agree to that.'

'I have your word and honour, sir?'

'My good fellow,' retorted Mr Boffin, 'you have my word; and how you
can have that, without my honour too, I don't know. I've sorted a lot
of dust in my time, but I never knew the two things go into separate
heaps.'

This remark seemed rather to abash Mr Venus. He hesitated, and said,
'Very true, sir;' and again, 'Very true, sir,' before resuming the
thread of his discourse.

'Mr Boffin, if I confess to you that I fell into a proposal of which you
were the subject, and of which you oughtn't to have been the subject,
you will allow me to mention, and will please take into favourable
consideration, that I was in a crushed state of mind at the time.'

The Golden Dustman, with his hands folded on the top of his stout
stick, with his chin resting upon them, and with something leering and
whimsical in his eyes, gave a nod, and said, 'Quite so, Venus.'

'That proposal, sir, was a conspiring bre