don't know what to do. He'll drop down on me any
way. He seems fully determined to drop down; don't he?'

Mr Venus opined that such was clearly his intention.

'You might be a sort of protection for me, if you remained in it,' said
Mr Boffin; 'you might stand betwixt him and me, and take the edge off
him. Don't you feel as if you could make a show of remaining in it,
Venus, till I had time to turn myself round?'

Venus naturally inquired how long Mr Boffin thought it might take him to
turn himself round?

'I am sure I don't know,' was the answer, given quite at a loss.
'Everything is so at sixes and sevens. If I had never come into the
property, I shouldn't have minded. But being in it, it would be very
trying to be turned out; now, don't you acknowledge that it would,
Venus?'

Mr Venus preferred, he said, to leave Mr Boffin to arrive at his own
conclusions on that delicate question.

'I am sure I don't know what to do,' said Mr Boffin. 'If I ask advice of
any one else, it's only letting in another person to be bought out, and
then I shall be ruined that way, and might as well have given up the
property and gone slap to the workhouse. If I was to take advice of my
young man, Rokesmith, I should have to buy HIM out. Sooner or later, of
course, he'd drop down upon me, like Wegg. I was brought into the world
to be dropped down upon, it appears to me.'

Mr Venus listened to these lamentations in silence, while Mr Boffin
jogged to and fro, holding his pockets as if he had a pain in them.

'After all, you haven't said what you mean to do yourself, Venus. When
you do go out of it, how do you mean to go?'

Venus replied that as Wegg had found the document and handed it to him,
it was his intention to hand it back to Wegg, with the declaration that
he himself would have nothing to say to it, or do with it, and that Wegg
must act as he chose, and take the consequences.

'And then he drops down with his whole weight upon ME!' cried Mr Boffin,
ruefully. 'I'd sooner be dropped upon by you than by him, or even by you
jintly, than by him alone!'

Mr Venus could only repeat that it was his fixed intention to betake
himself to the paths of science, and to walk in the same all the days
of his life; not dropping down upon his fellow-creatures until they were
deceased, and then only to articulate them to the best of his humble
ability.

'How long could you be persuaded to keep up the appearance of remaining
in it?' asked Mr