BOOK THE FOURTH: A TURNING
Chapter 3: The Golden Dustman Sinks Again (continued)
'Because if you did want to,' pursued Mr Wegg, the brilliancy of
whose point was dimmed by his having been unexpectedly
answered: 'you wouldn't be. I've been your slave long enough. I'm
not to be trampled under-foot by a dustman any more. With the
single exception of the salary, I renounce the whole and total
sitiwation.'
'Since you say it is to be so, Wegg,' returned Mr Boffin, with
folded hands, 'I suppose it must be.'
'I suppose it must be,' Wegg retorted. 'Next (to clear the ground
before coming to business), you've placed in this yard a skulking, a
sneaking, and a sniffing, menial.'
'He hadn't a cold in his head when I sent him here,' said Mr Boffin.
'Boffin!' retorted Wegg, 'I warn you not to attempt a joke with me!'
Here Mr Venus interposed, and remarked that he conceived Mr
Boffin to have taken the description literally; the rather, forasmuch
as he, Mr Venus, had himself supposed the menial to have
contracted an affliction or a habit of the nose, involving a serious
drawback on the pleasures of social intercourse, until he had
discovered that Mr Wegg's description of him was to be accepted
as merely figurative.
'Anyhow, and every how,' said Wegg, 'he has been planted here,
and he is here. Now, I won't have him here. So I call upon Boffin,
before I say another word, to fetch him in and send him packing to
the right-about.'
The unsuspecting Sloppy was at that moment airing his many
buttons within view of the window. Mr Boffin, after a short
interval of impassive discomfiture, opened the window and
beckoned him to come in.
'I call upon Boffin,' said Wegg, with one arm a-kimbo and his
head on one side, like a bullying counsel pausing for an answer
from a witness, 'to inform that menial that I am Master here!'
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