Editing Our Mutual Friend (section)

==Plot summary==
Having made his fortune from London's rubbish, the rich misanthropic miser Mr Harmon dies, estranged from all except his faithful employees Mr and Mrs Boffin. By his will, his fortune goes to his estranged son John Harmon, who is to return from his home abroad (possibly in South Africa) to claim it, on condition that he marries a woman he has never met, Miss Bella Wilfer.

John does not appear, though some knew him aboard the ship to London. A body is found in the Thames by waterman Gaffer Hexam, rowed by his daughter Lizzie. Hexam makes his living by retrieving corpses and taking the cash in their pockets, before handing them over to the authorities. Papers in the pockets of the drowned man identify him as Harmon. Present at the identification of the water-soaked corpse is a young man, who gives his name as Julius Handford and disappears.

The elder Harmon's estate devolves upon Mr and Mrs Boffin, who wish to enjoy it for themselves and to share it with others. They take pity on Miss Bella Wilfer, whose fortunes are thought to have been lost with John's death, and take her into their household, and treat her as their pampered child and heiress. Bella is disgusted by her lower middle class upbringing, and obsessed with marrying a wealthy man. They also accept an offer from a man known as Julius Handford, but now going under the name of John Rokesmith, to serve as their confidential secretary and man of business, at no salary for a trial period of two years. Rokesmith uses this position to watch and learn everything about the Boffins and Miss Wilfer. Mr Boffin engages one-legged ballad-seller Silas Wegg to read aloud to him in the evenings. When the Boffins purchase a large home, Wegg is invited to live in the old Harmon home. Wegg hopes to find hidden treasure in the house or in the mounds of rubbish on the property.

Gaffer is accused of murdering John Harmon by fellow waterman Roger "Rogue" Riderhood, who is bitter at having been cast off as Hexam's partner, and who covets the reward offered in relation to the murder. As a result of the accusation, Gaffer is shunned by his fellows on the river, and excluded from The Six Jolly Fellowship-Porters, the public house they frequent. Hexam's young son Charley leaves Gaffer's house to better himself at school, and to train to be a schoolmaster, encouraged by his sister Lizzie. Lizzie stays with Gaffer, to whom she is devoted.

Before Riderhood can claim the reward for his false allegation, Gaffer is found drowned himself. Lizzie becomes the lodger of a doll's dressmaker, a disabled teenager nicknamed "Jenny Wren". Jenny's alcoholic father lives with them, and is treated by Jenny as a child. Meanwhile, Mr and Mrs Lammle are a couple who have married each other for money, only to discover that neither has any. They attempt to obtain financial advantage by pairing off Fledgeby to the heiress Georgiana Podsnap. Fledgeby is an extortioner and money-lender, who uses the kindly old Jew Riah as his cover, temporarily causing Riah to fall out with his friend and protégée Jenny.

The work-shy barrister Eugene Wrayburn eventually meets and falls in love with Lizzie, but soon gains a violent rival in Bradley Headstone, Charley's schoolmaster. Charley wants Lizzie to be under obligation to no one but him, and tries to arrange lessons for her with Headstone, only to find that Wrayburn has already engaged a teacher for both Lizzie and Jenny. Headstone makes a proposal to Lizzie, who refuses. Angered by this and by Wrayburn's dismissive attitude towards him, Headstone comes to see Wrayburn as the source of all his misfortunes, and takes to following him at night. Lizzie fears Headstone's threats to Wrayburn, and is unsure of Wrayburn's intentions toward her (Wrayburn admits to Lightwood that he does not know his own intentions yet, either). She flees both men, getting work up-river from London, aided by Mr Riah.

Mr and Mrs Boffin attempt to adopt a young orphan, in the care of his great-grandmother, Betty Higden, but the boy dies. Mrs Higden minds children for a living, assisted by a foundling known as Sloppy. When Lizzie finds Mrs Higden dying and stops to care for her, she meets the Boffins and Bella Wilfer.

Rokesmith is in love with Bella Wilfer, but she cannot bear to accept him, having insisted that she will marry only for money. Mr Boffin appears to be corrupted by his wealth, and obsessed with biographies of misers. He begins to treat Rokesmith with contempt, stinginess, and cruelty. This arouses Bella Wilfer's sympathy, and when the Lammles (hoping to take Bella and Rokesmith's place as Mr Boffin's favorites) reveal to Mr Boffin that Rokesmith has proposed to Bella, and he dismisses Rokesmith, Bella stands up for him. Rokesmith and Bella marry and live happily, though in relatively poor circumstances. Bella soon conceives.

Meanwhile, Wrayburn has obtained information about Lizzie's whereabouts from Jenny's father, and finds the object of his affections. Headstone engages with Riderhood, now working as a lock-keeper, as Headstone is consumed with executing his threats against Wrayburn. After following Wrayburn up river and seeing him with Lizzie, Headstone attacks Wrayburn and leaves him for dead. Headstone tries to place blame for the assault on Rogue Riderhood by dressing in similar clothes when doing the deed and throwing his own clothes in the river. Riderhood fetches the bundle of clothing. Lizzie finds Wrayburn in the river and rescues him, with Jenny's help, who has discovered Fledgeby's trick, and reconciled with Mr Riah. Wrayburn, on his deathbed, marries Lizzie, and suppresses any hint that Headstone was his attacker to save her reputation. When he survives, he is glad that his near-death experience brought him into a loving marriage; although her social inferiority had not bothered him, he believes Lizzie would not otherwise have married him due to the social gulf between them.

Headstone learns Wrayburn is alive, recovering from the brutal beating, and married to Lizzie; he is overcome with the hopelessness of his situation. Riderhood attempts to blackmail Headstone. Confronted by Riderhood in his classroom, Headstone is seized with a self-destructive urge and flings himself into the lock, pulling Riderhood with him; both drown.

Meanwhile, Silas Wegg has, with help from Mr Venus (an "articulator of bones"), searched the dust mounds and discovered a later will of the Elder Harmon, which bequeaths his estate to the Crown rather than the Boffins. Wegg decides to blackmail Boffin, but Venus has second thoughts and reveals the plot to Boffin.

It gradually becomes clear to the reader that John Rokesmith is in fact John Harmon. Harmon had switched clothes with his shipmate en route to London, because Harmon wanted an opportunity to learn about his betrothed before claiming his inheritance; the shipmate agreed, with the intention of stealing Harmon's money. However, Riderhood had drugged, robbed, and dumped both Harmon and his shipmate in the river. Harmon survived the attempted murder, and maintained his alias to try to win Bella Wilfer for himself, rather than his inheritance. Now that she has married him, believing him to be poor, he throws off his disguise. It is revealed that Mr Boffin's apparent miserliness and ill-treatment of his secretary were part of a scheme to test Bella's motives.

When Wegg attempts to clinch his blackmail on the basis of the later will, Boffin turns the tables by revealing a still later will by which the fortune is granted to Boffin even at young John Harmon's expense. The Boffins are determined to make the Harmons their heirs anyway, so all ends well, except for Wegg, who is carted away by Sloppy. Sloppy himself becomes friendly with Jenny Wren, whose father has died.