'

This would seem to be secretly agreeable to Wegg, but he veils his
feelings, and observes, 'Strange. To what do you attribute it?'

'I don't know,' replies Venus, who is a haggard melancholy man, speaking
in a weak voice of querulous complaint, 'to what to attribute it, Mr
Wegg. I can't work you into a miscellaneous one, no how. Do what I will,
you can't be got to fit. Anybody with a passable knowledge would pick
you out at a look, and say,--"No go! Don't match!"'

'Well, but hang it, Mr Venus,' Wegg expostulates with some little
irritation, 'that can't be personal and peculiar in ME. It must often
happen with miscellaneous ones.'

'With ribs (I grant you) always. But not else. When I prepare a
miscellaneous one, I know beforehand that I can't keep to nature, and
be miscellaneous with ribs, because every man has his own ribs, and no
other man's will go with them; but elseways I can be miscellaneous. I
have just sent home a Beauty--a perfect Beauty--to a school of art. One
leg Belgian, one leg English, and the pickings of eight other people in
it. Talk of not being qualified to be miscellaneous! By rights you OUGHT
to be, Mr Wegg.'

Silas looks as hard at his one leg as he can in the dim light, and after
a pause sulkily opines 'that it must be the fault of the other people.
Or how do you mean to say it comes about?' he demands impatiently.

'I don't know how it comes about. Stand up a minute. Hold the light.'
Mr Venus takes from a corner by his chair, the bones of a leg and foot,
beautifully pure, and put together with exquisite neatness. These he
compares with Mr Wegg's leg; that gentleman looking on, as if he were
being measured for a riding-boot. 'No, I don't know how it is, but so it
is. You have got a twist in that bone, to the best of my belief. I never
saw the likes of you.'

Mr Wegg having looked distrustfully at his own limb, and suspiciously at
the pattern with which it has been compared, makes the point:

'I'll bet a pound that ain't an English one!'

'An easy wager, when we run so much into foreign! No, it belongs to that
French gentleman.'

As he nods towards a point of darkness behind Mr Wegg, the latter, with
a slight start, looks round for 'that French gentleman,' whom he at
length descries to be represented (in a very workmanlike manner) by his
ribs only, standing on a shelf in another corner, like a piece of armour
or a pair of stays.

'Oh!' says Mr Wegg, with a sort of sense of being in