with it, and also that he feels it due to himself to be anxiously
expected at the Bower. 'Boffin will get all the eagerer for waiting a
bit,' says Silas, screwing up, as he stumps along, first his right eye,
and then his left. Which is something superfluous in him, for Nature has
already screwed both pretty tight.

'If I get on with him as I expect to get on,' Silas pursues, stumping
and meditating, 'it wouldn't become me to leave it here. It wouldn't he
respectable.' Animated by this reflection, he stumps faster, and looks
a long way before him, as a man with an ambitious project in abeyance
often will do.

Aware of a working-jeweller population taking sanctuary about the church
in Clerkenwell, Mr Wegg is conscious of an interest in, and a respect
for, the neighbourhood. But, his sensations in this regard halt as to
their strict morality, as he halts in his gait; for, they suggest the
delights of a coat of invisibility in which to walk off safely with the
precious stones and watch-cases, but stop short of any compunction for
the people who would lose the same.

Not, however, towards the 'shops' where cunning artificers work in
pearls and diamonds and gold and silver, making their hands so rich,
that the enriched water in which they wash them is bought for the
refiners;--not towards these does Mr Wegg stump, but towards the poorer
shops of small retail traders in commodities to eat and drink and keep
folks warm, and of Italian frame-makers, and of barbers, and of brokers,
and of dealers in dogs and singing-birds. From these, in a narrow and
a dirty street devoted to such callings, Mr Wegg selects one dark
shop-window with a tallow candle dimly burning in it, surrounded by a
muddle of objects vaguely resembling pieces of leather and dry stick,