The friendly movers sat upright on the floor, panting and eyeing one another, after Mr Boffin had slammed the gate and gone away. In the weak eyes of Venus, and in every reddish dust-coloured hair in his shock of hair, there was a marked distrust of Wegg and an alertness to fly at him on perceiving the smallest occasion. In the hard-grained face of Wegg, and in his stiff knotty¹ figure (he looked like a German wooden toy), there was expressed a politic² conciliation³, which had no spontaneity in it. Both were flushed, flustered⁴, and rumpled⁵, by the late scuffle; and Wegg, in coming to the ground, had received a humming knock on the back of his devoted⁶ head, which caused him still to rub it with an air of having been highly — but disagreeably — astonished. Each was silent for some time, leaving it to the other to begin.

‘Brother,’ said Wegg, at length breaking the silence, ‘you were right, and I was wrong. I forgot myself.’

Mr Venus knowingly cocked his shock of hair, as rather thinking Mr Wegg had remembered himself, in respect of appearing without any disguise.

‘But comrade,’ pursued Wegg, ‘it was never your lot to know Miss Elizabeth, Master George, Aunt Jane, nor Uncle Parker.’

Mr Venus admitted that he had never known those distinguished⁷ persons, and added, in effect, that he had never so much as desired the honour of their acquaintance.

‘Don’t say that, comrade!’ retorted Wegg: ‘No, don’t say that! Because, without having known them, you never can fully⁸ know what it is to be stimilated to frenzy⁹ by the sight of the

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