money for a deal about you? Then I'll tell you what I'll do with you;
I'll hold you over. I am a man of my 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