, sir?' said Betty. 'Ay, it's a beautiful letter!'

'No, no, no; not the letter,' said Mr Boffin; 'the idea. Are you sure
you're strong enough to carry out the idea?'

'I shall be stronger, and keep the deadness off better, this way, than
any way left open to me, sir.'

'Don't say than any way left open, you know,' urged Mr Boffin; 'because
there are ways without end. A housekeeper would be acceptable over
yonder at the Bower, for instance. Wouldn't you like to see the
Bower, and know a retired literary man of the name of Wegg that lives
there--WITH a wooden leg?'

Old Betty was proof even against this temptation, and fell to adjusting
her black bonnet and shawl.

'I wouldn't let you go, now it comes to this, after all,' said Mr
Boffin, 'if I didn't hope that it may make a man and a workman of
Sloppy, in as short a time as ever a man and workman was made yet. Why,
what have you got there, Betty? Not a doll?'

It was the man in the Guards who had been on duty over Johnny's bed.
The solitary old woman showed what it was, and put it up quietly in her
dress. Then, she gratefully took leave of Mrs Boffin, and of Mr Boffin,
and of Rokesmith, and then put her old withered arms round Bella's young
and blooming neck, and said, repeating Johnny's words: 'A kiss for the
boofer lady.'

The Secretary looked on from a doorway at the boofer lady thus
encircled, and still looked on at the boofer lady standing alone there,
when the determined old figure with its steady bright eyes was trudging
through the streets, away from paralysis and pauperism.

Chapter 15

THE WHOLE CASE SO FAR

Bradley Headstone held fast by that other interview he was to have with
Lizzie Hexam. In stipulating for it, he had been impelled by a feeling
little short of desperation, and the feeling abided by him. It was very
soon after his interview with the Secretary, that he and Charley Hexam
set out one leaden evening, not unnoticed by Miss Peecher, to have this
desperate interview accomplished.

'That dolls' dressmaker,' said Bradley, 'is favourable neither to me nor
to you, Hexam.'

'A pert crooked little chit, Mr Headstone! I knew she would put herself
in the way, if she could, and would be sure to strike in with something
impertinent. It was on that account that I proposed our going to the
City to-night and meeting my sister.'

'So I supposed,' said Bradley, getting his gloves on his nervous hands
as he walked. 'So I supposed.'

'Nobod