money to the best, he took my opinion to guide his choice, and we went
over the collection together. To be sure we did. Here was him as it
might be, and here was myself as it might be, and there was you, Mr
Boffin, as you identically are, with your self-same stick under your
very same arm, and your very same back towards us. To--be--sure!' added
Mr Wegg, looking a little round Mr Boffin, to take him in the rear,
and identify this last extraordinary coincidence, 'your wery self-same
back!'

'What do you think I was doing, Wegg?'

'I should judge, sir, that you might be glancing your eye down the
street.'

'No, Wegg. I was a listening.'

'Was you, indeed?' said Mr Wegg, dubiously.

'Not in a dishonourable way, Wegg, because you was singing to the
butcher; and you wouldn't sing secrets to a butcher in the street, you
know.'

'It never happened that I did so yet, to the best of my remembrance,'
said Mr Wegg, cautiously. 'But I might do it. A man can't say what he
might wish to do some day or another.' (This, not to release any little
advantage he might derive from Mr Boffin's avowal.)

'Well,' repeated Boffin, 'I was a listening to you and to him. And what
do you--you haven't got another stool, have you? I'm rather thick in my
breath.'