Mrs Boffin clapped her hands again, rocked herself again, beat her feet
upon the floor, and wiped the tears of laughter from her eyes.

'And what, my old lady,' inquired Mr Boffin, when he also had
sympathetically laughed: 'what's your views on the subject of the
Bower?'

'Shut it up. Don't part with it, but put somebody in it, to keep it.'

'Any other views?'

'Noddy,' said Mrs Boffin, coming from her fashionable sofa to his side
on the plain settle, and hooking her comfortable arm through his,
'Next I think--and I really have been thinking early and late--of the
disappointed girl; her that was so cruelly disappointed, you know, both
of her husband and his riches. Don't you think we might do something for
her? Have her to live with us? Or something of that sort?'

'Ne-ver once thought of the way of doing it!' cried Mr Boffin, smiting
the table in his admiration. 'What a thinking steam-ingein this old lady
is. And she don't know how she does it. Neither does the ingein!'

Mrs Boffin pulled his nearest ear, in acknowledgment of this piece of
philosophy, and then said, gradually toning down to a motherly strain:
'Last, and not least, I have taken a fancy. You remember dear little
John Harmon, before he went to school? Over yonder across the yard, at
our fire? Now that he is past all benefit of the money, and it's come to
us, I should like to find some orphan child, and take the boy and adopt
him and give him John's name, and provide for him. Somehow, it would