word, and you needn't be afraid of
my disposing of you. I'll hold you over. That's a promise. Oh dear me,
dear me!'

Fain to accept his promise, and wishing to propitiate him, Mr Wegg looks
on as he sighs and pours himself out more tea, and then says, trying to
get a sympathetic tone into his voice:

'You seem very low, Mr Venus. Is business bad?'

'Never was so good.'

'Is your hand out at all?'

'Never was so well in. Mr Wegg, I'm not only first in the trade, but I'm
THE trade. You may go and buy a skeleton at the West End if you like,
and pay the West End price, but it'll be my putting together. I've as
much to do as I can possibly do, with the assistance of my young man,
and I take a pride and a pleasure in it.'

Mr Venus thus delivers himself, his right hand extended, his smoking
saucer in his left hand, protesting as though he were going to burst
into a flood of tears.

'That ain't a state of things to make you low, Mr Venus.'

'Mr Wegg, I know it ain't. Mr Wegg, not to name myself as a workman
without an equal, I've gone on improving myself in my knowledge of
Anatomy, till both by sight and by name I'm perfect. Mr Wegg, if you was
brought here loose in a bag to be articulated, I'd name your smallest
bones blindfold equally with your largest, as fast as I could pick 'em
out, and I'd sort 'em all, and sort your wertebrae, in a manner that
would equally surprise and charm you.'

'Well,' remarks Silas (though not quite so readily as last time), 'THAT
ain't a state of things to be low about.--Not for YOU to be low about,
leastways.'

'Mr Wegg, I know it ain't; Mr Wegg, I know it ain't. But it's the heart
that lowers me, it is the heart! Be so good as take and read that card
out loud.'

Silas receives one from his hand, which Venus takes from a wonderful
litter in a drawer, and putting on his spectacles, reads:

'"Mr Venus,"'

'Yes. Go on.'

'"Preserver of Animals and Birds,"'

'Yes. Go on.'

'"Articulator of human bones."'

'That's it,' with a groan. 'That's it! Mr Wegg, I'm thirty-two, and a
bachelor. Mr Wegg, I love her. Mr Wegg, she is worthy of being loved by
a Potentate!' Here Silas is rather alarmed by Mr Venus's springing to
his feet in the hurry of his spirits, and haggardly confronting him with
his hand on his coat collar; but Mr Venus, begging pardon, sits down
again, saying, with the calmness of despair, 'She objects to the
business.'

'Does she know the profits of it?'

'She kn