as many as a dozen people had
got together in the lane to see the neatness with which he fitted the
broken pieces of a foreign monkey's musical instrument. 'That's well,'
said the Secretary. 'It will not be hard to find a trade for him.'

John Harmon being buried under mountains now, the Secretary that very
same day set himself to finish his affairs and have done with him. He
drew up an ample declaration, to be signed by Rogue Riderhood (knowing
he could get his signature to it, by making him another and much shorter
evening call), and then considered to whom should he give the document?
To Hexam's son, or daughter? Resolved speedily, to the daughter. But it
would be safer to avoid seeing the daughter, because the son had seen
Julius Handford, and--he could not be too careful--there might possibly
be some comparison of notes between the son and daughter, which would
awaken slumbering suspicion, and lead to consequences. 'I might even,'
he reflected, 'be apprehended as having been concerned in my own
murder!' Therefore, best to send it to the daughter under cover by the
post. Pleasant Riderhood had undertaken to find out where she lived,
and it was not necessary that it should be attended by a single word of
explanation. So far, straight.

But, all that he knew of the daughter he derived from Mrs Boffin's
accounts of what she heard from Mr Lightwood, who seemed to have a
reputation for his manner of relating a story, and to have made this
story quite his own. It interested him, and he would like to have
the means of knowing more--as, for instance, that she received the
exonerating paper, and that it satisfied her--by opening some channel
altogether independent of Lightwood: who likewise had seen Julius
Handford, who had publicly advertised for Julius Handford, and whom
of all men he, the Secretary, most avoided. 'But with whom the common
course of things might bring me in a moment face to face, any day in the
week or any hour in the day.'

Now, to cast about for some likely means of opening such a channel. The
boy, Hexam, was training for and with a schoolmaster. The Secretary knew
it, because his sister's share in that disposal of him seemed to be
the best part of Lightwood's account of the family. This young fellow,
Sloppy, stood in need of some instruction. If he, the Secretary, engaged
that schoolmaster to impart it to him, the channel might be opened. The
next point was, did Mrs Boffin know the schoolmaster's name