warious. Everything within reach of your hand, in good preservation.
The mouldy ones a-top. What's in those hampers over them again, I don't
quite remember. Say, human warious. Cats. Articulated English baby.
Dogs. Ducks. Glass eyes, warious. Mummied bird. Dried cuticle, warious.
Oh, dear me! That's the general panoramic view.'

Having so held and waved the candle as that all these heterogeneous
objects seemed to come forward obediently when they were named, and
then retire again, Mr Venus despondently repeats, 'Oh dear me, dear
me!' resumes his seat, and with drooping despondency upon him, falls to
pouring himself out more tea.

'Where am I?' asks Mr Wegg.

'You're somewhere in the back shop across the yard, sir; and speaking
quite candidly, I wish I'd never bought you of the Hospital Porter.'

'Now, look here, what did you give for me?'

'Well,' replies Venus, blowing his tea: his head and face peering out
of the darkness, over the smoke of it, as if he were modernizing the old
original rise in his family: 'you were one of a warious lot, and I don't
know.'

Silas puts his point in the improved form of 'What will you take for
me?'

'Well,' replies Venus, still blowing his tea, 'I'm not prepared, at a
moment's notice, to tell you, Mr Wegg.'

'Come! According to your own account I'm not worth much,' Wegg reasons
persuasively.

'Not for miscellaneous working in, I grant you, Mr Wegg; but you might
turn out valuable yet, as a--' here Mr Venus takes a gulp of tea, so
hot that it makes him choke, and sets his weak eyes watering; 'as a
Monstrosity, if you'll excuse me.'

Repressing an indignant look, indicative of anything but a disposition
to excuse him, Silas pursues his point.

'I think you know me, Mr Venus, and I think you know I never bargain.'

Mr Venus takes gulps of hot tea, shutting his eyes at every gulp, and
opening them again in a spasmodic manner; but does not commit himself to
assent.

'I have a prospect of getting on in life and elevating myself by my own
independent exertions,' says Wegg, feelingly, 'and I shouldn't like--I
tell you openly I should NOT like--under such circumstances, to be what
I may call dispersed, a part of me here, and a part of me there, but
should wish to collect myself like a genteel person.'

'It's a prospect at present, is it, Mr Wegg? Then you haven't got the
money for a deal about you? Then I'll tell you what I'll do with you;
I'll hold you over. I am a man of my