Chapter 63 - Page 2

from time to time. 'It
was after a particular night when John had been disappointed--as
he thought--in his affections. It was after a night when John had
made an offer to a certain young lady, and the certain young lady
had refused it. It was after a particular night, when he felt himself
cast-away-like, and had made up his mind to go seek his fortune.
It was the very next night. My Noddy wanted a paper out of his
Secretary's room, and I says to Noddy, "I am going by the door,
and I'll ask him for it." I tapped at his door, and he didn't hear me.
I looked in, and saw him a sitting lonely by his fire, brooding over
it. He chanced to look up with a pleased kind of smile in my
company when he saw me, and then in a single moment every
grain of the gunpowder that had been lying sprinkled thick about
him ever since I first set eyes upon him as a man at the Bower,
took fire! Too many a time had I seen him sitting lonely, when he
was a poor child, to be pitied, heart and hand! Too many a time
had I seen him in need of being brightened up with a comforting
word! Too many and too many a time to be mistaken, when that
glimpse of him come at last! No, no! I just makes out to cry, "I
know you now! You're John!" And he catches me as I drops.--So
what,' says Mrs Boffin, breaking off in the rush of her speech to
smile most radiantly, 'might you think by this time that your
husband's name was, dear?'

'Not,' returned Bella, with quivering lips; 'not Harmon? That's not
possible?'

'Don't tremble. Why not possible, deary, when so many things are
possible?' demanded Mrs Boffin, in a soothing tone.

'He was killed,' gasped Bella.

'Thought to be,' said Mrs Boffin. 'But if ever John Harmon drew
the breath of life on earth, that is certainly John Harmon's arm
round your waist now, my pretty. If ever John Harmon had a wife
on earth, that wife is certainly you. If ever John Harmon and his
wife had a child on earth, that child is certainly this.'

By a master-stroke of secret arrangement, the inexhaustible baby
here appeared at the door, suspended in mid-air by invisible
agency. Mrs Boffin, plunging at it, brought it to Bella's lap, where
both Mrs and Mr Boffin (as the saying is) 'took it out of' the
Inexhaustible in a shower of caresses. It was only this timely
appearance that kept Bella from swooning. This, and her
husband's earnestness in explaining further to her how it had come
to pass that he had been supposed to be slain, and had even been
suspected of his own murder; also, how he had put a pious fraud
upon her which had preyed upon his mind, as the time for its
disclosure approached, lest she might not make full allowance for
the object with which it had originated, and in which it had