Sam took Job to Mr. Pickwick, to whom he repeated his tale, adding that he and his master were to be let into the school building at ten o'clock, and that if Mr. Pickwick would climb over the garden wall and tap on the kitchen door a little before midnight, he, Job, would let him in to catch Jingle in the very act of eloping.

This seemed to Mr. Pickwick a good plan, and he proceeded to act upon it. In good time that night Sam hoisted him over the high garden-wall of the school, after which he returned to the inn, while his master stealthily approached the building.

It was very still. When the church chimes struck half-past eleven Mr. Pickwick tapped on the door. Instead of being opened by Job, however, a servant-girl appeared with a candle. Mr. Pickwick had presence of mind enough to hide behind the door as she opened it. She concluded the noise must have been the cat.

Mr. Pickwick did not know what was best to do. To make matters worse, a thunder-storm broke and he had no refuge from the rain. He was thoroughly drenched before he dared repeat the signal.

This time windows were thrown open and frightened voices demanded "Who's there?" Mr. Pickwick was in a dreadful situation. He could not retreat, and when the door was timidly opened and some one screamed "A man!" there was a dreadful chorus of shrieks from the lady principal, three teachers, five female servants and thirty young lady boarders, all half-dressed and in a forest of curl papers.

Mr. Pickwick was desperate. He protested that he was no robber—that he would even consent to be tied or locked up, only to convince them. A closet stood in the hall; as a pledge of good faith he stepped inside it. Its door was quickly locked and only then the trembling principal consented to listen to him. By the time he had told his story, he knew that he had been cruelly hoaxed by Jingle and Job Trotter. She knew not even the name of Mr. Fitz-Marshall. For her own part she was certain Mr. Pickwick was crazy, and he had to stay in the stuffy closet over an hour while at his request some one was sent to find Sam Weller.

The latter came at length, bringing with him old Mr. Wardle, who, as it happened, unknown to Mr. Pickwick, was stopping at the inn. Explanations were made and Mr. Pickwick, choking with wrath, returned to the inn to find Jingle and his servant gone, and to be, himself, for some time thereafter, a prey to rheumatism.

A serious matter at this juncture called Mr. Pickwick home. This was a legal summons notifying him that Mrs. Bardell, his landlady, had brought a suit for damages against him, claiming he had promised to marry her and had then run away. A firm of tricky lawyers had persuaded her to this in the hope of getting some money out of it themselves. Mr. Pickwick was very angry, but there was nothing for it but to hire a lawyer, so he and Sam Weller set out without delay.

IV

SAM WELLER MEETS HIS FATHER, AND THE PURSUIT OF JINGLE IS CONTINUED. MR. PICKWICK MAKES A STRANGE CALL ON A MIDDLE-AGED LADY IN YELLOW CURL PAPERS

Having arranged this matter in London, master and servant sat one evening in a public house when Sam recognized in a stout man with his face buried in a quart pot, his own father, old Tony Weller, the stage-coach driver, and with great affection introduced him to Mr. Pickwick.

"How's mother-in-law?" asked Sam.

The elder Mr. Weller shook his head as he replied, "I've done it once too often, Samivel. Take example by your father, my boy, and be very careful o' widders, 'specially if they've kept a public house."

Mrs. Weller the second, indeed, was the proprietress of a public house. To a shrill voice and a complaining disposition she added a dismal sort of piety which showed itself in much going to meeting, in considering her husband a lost and sinful wretch and in the entertaining of a prim-faced, red-nosed, rusty old hypocrite of a preacher who sat by her fireside every evening consuming quantities of toast and pineapple rum, and groaning at the depravity of her husband, who declined to give money to the preacher's society for sending flannel waistcoats and colored handkerchiefs to the infant negroes of the West Indies. As may be imagined, Sam's father led a sorry life at home.

The meeting with the elder Weller proved a fortunate one, for when Sam told of their experiences with Jingle and Job Trotter, his father declared that he himself had driven the pair to the town of Ipswich, where they were then living. Nothing would satisfy Mr. Pickwick, when he heard this, but pursuit, and he and Sam set out next morning by coach, Mr. Pickwick having written to the other Pickwickians to follow him.

On the coach was a red-haired man with an inquisitive nose and blue spectacles, whose name was Mr. Peter Magnus, and with whom (since they stopped at the same inn) Mr. Pickwick dined on his arrival. Mr. Magnus, before they parted for the night, grew confidential and informed him that he had come there to propose to a lady who was in the inn at that very moment.

For some time after he retired, Mr. Pickwick sat in his bedroom thinking. At length he rose to undress, when he remembered he had left his watch down stairs, and taking a candle he went to get it. He found it easily, but to retrace his steps proved more difficult. A dozen doors he thought his own, and a dozen times he turned a door-knob only to hear a gruff voice within. At last he found what he thought was his own room, the door ajar. The wind had blown out his candle, but the fire was bright, and Mr. Pickwick, as he retired behind the bed curtains to undress, smiled till he almost cracked his nightcap strings as he thought of his wanderings.

Suddenly the smile faded—some one had entered the room and locked the door. "Robbers!" thought Mr. Pickwick. He peered out between the curtains and almost fainted with horror. Standing before the mirror was a middle-aged lady in yellow curl papers, brushing her back-hair.

"Bless my soul!" thought Mr. Pickwick. "I must be in the wrong room. This is fearful!"

He waited a while, then coughed, first gently, then more loudly.

"Gracious Heaven!" said the middle-aged lady. "What's that?"

"It's—it's only a gentleman, ma'am," said Mr. Pickwick.

"A strange man!" exclaimed the lady with a terrific scream.

Mr. Pickwick put out his head in desperation.

"Wretch!" she said, covering her face with her hands. "What do you want here?"

"Nothing, ma'am—nothing whatever, ma'am," said Mr. Pickwick earnestly. "I am almost ready to sink, ma'am, beneath the confusion of addressing a lady in my nightcap (here the lady snatched off hers) but I can't get it off, ma'am! (here Mr. Pickwick gave it a tremendous tug). It is evident to me now that I have mistaken this bedroom for my own."

"If this be true," said the lady sobbing violently, "you will leave it instantly."

"Certainly, ma'am," answered Mr. Pickwick appearing, "I—I—am very sorry, ma'am."

The lady pointed to the door. With his hat on over his nightcap, his shoes in his hand and his coat over his arm, Mr. Pickwick opened the door, dropping both shoes with a crash. "I trust, ma'am," he resumed, bowing very low, "that my unblemished character—" but before he could finish the sentence the lady had thrust him into the hall and bolted the door.

Luckily Mr. Pickwick met, coming along the corridor, the faithful Sam Weller who took him safely to his room.

V

THE PICKWICKIANS FIND THEMSELVES IN THE GRASP OF THE LAW. THE FINAL EXPOSURE OF JINGLE, AND A CHRISTMAS MERRYMAKING

Mr. Pickwick was still indoors next morning, when Sam, strolling through the town, met, coming from a certain garden-gate, the wily Job Trotter. Job tried at first to disguise himself by making a horrible face, but Sam was not to be deceived, and finding this trick vain, the other burst into tears of joy to see him.

Job told Sam that his master, Jingle, had bribed the mistress of the boarding-school to deny to Mr. Pickwick that she knew him, and had then cruelly deserted the beautiful young lady for a richer one. But this time Sam was too wise to believe anything Job said.

Meanwhile, in the inn, Mr. Pickwick was giving Mr. Peter Magnus some good advice as to the best method of proposing. The latter finally plucked up his courage, saw the lady, proposed to her, and was accepted. In his gratitude, he insisted on taking Mr. Pickwick to be introduced to her.

The instant he saw her, however, Mr. Pickwick uttered an exclamation, and the lady, with a slight scream, hid her face in her hands. She was none other than the owner of the room into which Mr. Pickwick had intruded the night before.

Mr. Peter Magnus, in astonishment, demanded where and when they had seen each other before. This the lady declared she would not reveal for the world, and Mr. Pickwick likewise refusing, the other flew into a jealous rage, which ended in his rushing from the room swearing he would challenge Mr. Pickwick to mortal combat. Tupman, Winkle and Snodgrass being announced at that moment, Mr. Pickwick joined them, and the middle-aged lady was left alone in a state of terrible alarm.

The longer she thought the more terrified she became at the idea of possible bloodshed and harm to her lover. At length, overcome by dread, and knowing no other way to stop the duel, she hastened to the house of the mayor of the town, a pompous magistrate named Nupkins, and begged him to stop the duel. Not wishing to make trouble for Mr. Peter Magnus, she declared that the two rioters who threatened to disturb the peace of the town were named Pickwick and Tupman; these two, Nupkins, thinking them cutthroats from London, at once sent men to arrest.

Mr. Pickwick was just telling his followers the story of his mishap of the night before, when a half-dozen officers burst into the room. Boiling with indignation, Mr. Pickwick had to submit, and the officers put him and Tupman into an old sedan-chair and carried them off, followed by Winkle and Snodgrass and by all the town loafers.

Sam Weller met the procession and tried to rescue them, but was knocked down and taken prisoner also. So they were all brought to Nupkins's house.

The mayor refused to hear a word Mr. Pickwick said and was about to send them all to jail as desperate characters when Sam Weller called his master aside and whispered to him that the house they were in was the very one from which he had seen Job Trotter come, and from this fact he guessed that Jingle himself had wormed himself into the good graces of the mayor. At this Mr. Pickwick asked to have a private talk with Nupkins.

This was grudgingly granted and in a few moments Mr. Pickwick had learned that Jingle, calling himself "Captain Fitz-Marshall," had imposed so well on the pompous mayor that the latter's wife and daughter had introduced him everywhere and he himself had boasted to everybody of his acquaintance.

It was Nupkins's turn to feel humble when Mr. Pickwick told him Jingle's real character. He was terribly afraid the story would get out and that the town would laugh at him, so he became all at once tremendously polite, declared their arrest had been all a mistake and begged the Pickwickians to make themselves at home. Sam Weller was sent down to the kitchen to get his dinner, where he met a pretty housemaid named Mary, with whom he proceeded to fall very much in love for the first time in his life.

Jingle and Job walked into the trap a little later, not expecting the kind of reception they were to find there. But even before the combined scorn of Nupkins, Mrs. Nupkins, Miss Nupkins and the Pickwickians, Jingle showed a brazen front. He knew pride would prevent the mayor from exposing him, and when finally shown the door, he left with a mocking jeer, followed by the chuckling Job.

In spite of his own troubles Mr. Pickwick left Ipswich comforted by the defeat of Jingle. As for Sam, he kissed the pretty housemaid behind the door and they parted with mutual regrets.

To atone for these difficult adventures, the Pickwickians prepared for a long visit to Dingley Dell, where they spent an old-fashioned Merry Christmas; where they found the fat boy even fatter and Mr. Wardle even jollier; where Tupman was not saddened by the sight of his lost love, the spinster aunt, who had been sent to live with another relative; where Snodgrass came more than ever to admire Emily, the pretty daughter; where Winkle fell head over ears in love with a black-eyed young lady visitor named Arabella Allen, who wore a nice little pair of boots with fur around the top; where they went skating and Mr. Pickwick broke through, and had to be carried home and put to bed; where they hung mistletoe and told stories, and altogether enjoyed themselves in a hundred ways.

Ben Allen, Arabella's brother, reached Dingley Dell on Christmas Day—a thick-set, mildewy young man, with short black hair, a long white face and spectacles. He was a medical student, and brought with him his chum, Bob Sawyer, a slovenly, smart, swaggering young gentleman, who smelled strongly of tobacco smoke and looked like a dissipated Robinson Crusoe. Ben intended that his chum should marry his sister Arabella, and Bob Sawyer paid her so much attention that Winkle began to hate him on the spot.

The Christmas merrymaking was all too soon over, and as Mrs. Bardell's lawsuit against Mr. Pickwick was shortly to be tried, the Pickwickians returned regretfully to the city.

VI

THE CELEBRATED CASE OF BARBELL AGAINST PICKWICK. SERGEANT BUZFUZ'S SPEECH AND AN UNEXPECTED VERDICT

On the morning of the trial Mr. Pickwick went to court certain that the outcome would be in his favor. The room was full of people, and all the Pickwickians were there when he arrived. The Judge was a very short man, so plump that he seemed all face and waistcoat. When he had rolled in upon two little turned legs, and sat down at his desk, all you could see of him was two little eyes, one broad pink face, and about half of a comical, big wig. Scarcely had the jurors taken their seats, when Mrs. Bardell's lawyers brought in the lady herself, half hysterical, and supported by two tearful lady friends. The ushers called for silence and the trial began.

The lawyer who spoke for Mrs. Bardell was named Sergeant Buzfuz, a blustering man with a fat body and a red face. He began by picturing Mr. Pickwick's housekeeper as a lonely widow who had been heartlessly deceived by the villainy of her lodger. He declared that for two years, Mrs. Bardell had attended to Mr. Pickwick's comforts, that once he had patted her little boy on the head and asked him how he would like to have another father; that he had also asked her to marry him, and on the same day had been seen by three of his friends holding her in his arms and soothing her agitation. Drawing forth two scraps of paper, Sergeant Buzfuz went on:

"Gentlemen, one word more. Two letters have passed between these parties, which speak volumes. They are not open, fervent letters of affection. They are sly, underhanded communications evidently intended by Pickwick to mislead and delude any one into whose hands they might fall. Let me read the first: 'Dear Mrs. B.—Chops and tomato Sauce. Yours, Pickwick.' Gentlemen, what does this mean? Chops! Gracious Heavens! and Tomato Sauce. Gentlemen, is the happiness of a trusting female to be trifled away by such shallow tricks? The next has no date. 'Dear Mrs. B.—I shall not be at home till to-morrow.' And then follows this remarkable expression—'Don't trouble yourself about the warming-pan.' The warming-pan! Why is Mrs. Bardell begged not to trouble herself about this warming-pan, unless (as is no doubt the case) it is a mere substitute for some endearing word or promise, cunningly used by Pickwick, with a view to his intended desertion?

"But enough of this, gentlemen. It is hard to smile with an aching heart. My client's hopes are ruined. All is gloom in the house; the child's sports are forgotten while his mother weeps. But Pickwick, gentlemen, Pickwick, the pitiless destroyer—Pickwick who comes before you to-day with his heartless tomato sauce and warming-pans—Pickwick still rears his head, and gazes without a sigh on the ruins he has made. Damages, gentlemen, heavy damages is the only punishment with which you can visit him. And for these damages, my client now appeals to a high-minded, a right-feeling, a sympathizing jury of her countrymen!"

With this Sergeant Buzfuz stopped, and began to call his witnesses. The first was one of Mrs. Bardell's female cronies, whose testimony of course, was all in her favor.

Then Winkle was called. Knowing that he was a friend of Mr. Pickwick's, Mrs. Bardell's lawyers browbeat and puzzled him till poor Mr. Winkle had the air of a disconcerted pickpocket, and was in a terrible state of confusion. He was soon made to tell how, with Tupman and Snodgrass, he had come into Mr. Pickwick's lodgings one day to find him holding Mrs. Bardell in his arms. The other two Pickwickians were also compelled to testify to this.

Nor was this all. Sergeant Buzfuz finally entrapped the agonized Winkle into telling how Mr. Pickwick had been found at night in the wrong room at the Ipswich Inn and how as a result a lady's marriage had been broken off and the whole party arrested and taken before the mayor. Poor Winkle was obliged to tell this, though he knew it would hurt the case of Mr. Pickwick. When he was released he rushed away to the nearest inn, where he was found some hours later by the waiter, groaning dismally with his head under the sofa cushions.

Mr. Pickwick's case looked black. The only comfort he received was from the testimony of Sam Weller, who tried to do Mrs. Bardell's side all possible harm yet say as little about his master as he could, and who kept the court room in a roar of laughter with his sallies.

"Do you mean to tell me, Mr. Weller," said Sergeant Buzfuz finally, "that you saw nothing of Mrs. Bardell's fainting in the arms of Mr. Pickwick? Have you a pair of eyes, Mr. Weller?"

"Yes, I have a pair of eyes," replied Sam, "and that's just it. If they was a pair o' patent-double-million-magnifyin'-gas-miscroscopes of hextra power, p'r'aps I might be able to see through a flight o' stairs and a deal door; but bein' only eyes, you see, my wision's limited." Sergeant Buzfuz could make nothing out of Sam, and so the case for Mrs. Bardell closed.

Mr. Pickwick's lawyer made a long speech in his favor, but it was of no use. The evidence seemed all against him. The jury found him guilty of breach of promise of marriage, and sentenced him to pay Mrs. Bardell her damages.

Mr. Pickwick was speechless with indignation. He vowed that not one penny would he ever pay if he spent the rest of his life in a jail. His own lawyer warned him that if he did not pay within two months, Mrs. Bardell's lawyers could put him into the debtors' prison, but Mr. Pickwick prepared to start on another excursion with his three friends, still declaring that he would never pay.

VII

WINKLE HAS AN EXCITING ADVENTURE WITH MR. DOWLER, AND WITH THE AID OF MR. PICKWICK AND SAM WELLER DISCOVERS THE WHEREABOUTS OF MISS ARABELLA ALLEN

At Bath, a resort very popular with people of fashion, the Pickwickians decided to spend the next two months, and started by coach at once, accompanied by Sam Weller. On the coach they fell in with a fierce-looking, abrupt gentleman named Dowler, with a bald, glossy forehead and large black whiskers, who introduced them to the society of Bath, particularly to Mr. Angelo Cyrus Bantam, master of ceremonies at the famous Assembly-Room, where the fashionable balls were held. Mr. Bantam carried a gold eye-glass, a gold snuff-box, gold rings on his finger, a gold watch in his waistcoat pocket, a gold chain and an ebony cane with a gold head. His linen was the whitest, his wig the blackest, and his teeth were so fine that it was hard to tell the real ones from the false ones.

Mr. Bantam made the Pickwickians welcome and in three days' time they were settled in a fine house, where Mr. and Mrs. Dowler also lodged. Mr. Pickwick passed his days in drinking the spring-water for which Bath was famous, and in walking; his evenings he spent at the Assembly balls, at the theater or in making entries in his journal.

One evening Mrs. Dowler was carried off to a party in her sedan-chair, leaving her husband to sit up for her. The Pickwickians had long since gone to bed, and Mr. Dowler fell fast asleep while he waited. It was a very windy night and the sedan-carriers, who brought the lady home, knocked in vain at the door. Mr. Dowler did not wake, though they knocked like an insane postman.

At length Winkle in his own room was roused by the racket. He donned slippers and dressing-gown, hurried down stairs half asleep and opened the door. At the glare of the torches he jumped to the conclusion that the house was on fire and rushed outside, when the door blew shut behind him.

Seeing a lady's face at the window of the sedan-chair, he turned and knocked at the door frantically, but with no response. He was undressed and the wind blew his dressing-gown in a most unpleasant manner. "There are people coming down the street now. There are ladies with 'em; cover me up with something! Stand before me!" roared Winkle, but the chairmen only laughed. The ladies were nearer and in desperation he bolted into the sedan-chair where Mrs. Dowler was.

Now Mr. Dowler, a moment before, had bounced off the bed, and now threw open the window just in time to see this. He thought his wife was running away with another man, and seizing a supper knife, the indignant husband tore into the street, shouting furiously.

Winkle, hearing his horrible threats, did not wait. He leaped out of the sedan-chair and took to his heels, hotly pursued by Dowler. He dodged his pursuer at length, rushed back, slammed the door in Dowler's face, gained his bedroom, barricaded his door with furniture and packed his belongings. At the first streak of dawn, he slipped out and took coach for Bristol.

Mr. Pickwick was greatly vexed over Winkle's unheroic flight. Sam Weller soon discovered where he had gone, and Mr. Pickwick sent him after the fugitive, bidding him find Winkle and either compel him to return or keep him in sight until Mr. Pickwick himself could follow.

Winkle, meanwhile, walking about the Bristol streets, chanced to stop at a doctor's office to make some inquiries, and in a young medical gentleman in green spectacles recognized, to his huge surprise, Bob Sawyer, the bosom friend of Ben Allen, both of whom he had met on Christmas Day at Dingley Dell. Bob, in delight, dragged Winkle into the back room where sat Ben Allen, amusing himself by boring holes in the chimney piece with a red-hot poker.

The precious couple had, in fact, set up shop together, and were using every trick they knew to make people think them great doctors with a tremendous practice. They insisted on Winkle's staying to supper, and it was lucky he did so, for he heard news of Arabella, the pretty girl who had worn the little boots with fur around the top at Dingley Dell, and with whom he had fallen in love. He learned that Arabella had scorned the sprightly Bob Sawyer, and that her brother, in anger, had taken her away from Mr. Wardle's and put her in the house of an old aunt—a dull, close place not far from Bristol. Before he bade them good night, Winkle had determined to find her.

He met with a shock, on returning to his inn, to come suddenly upon Dowler sitting in the coffee-room. Winkle drew back, very pale, and was greatly surprised to see the bloodthirsty Dowler do likewise as, growing even paler than Winkle, he began an apology for his action of the evening before. As a matter of fact, Dowler had run away from Bath, too, at dawn, in fear of Winkle, and thought now the latter had pursued him. Winkle, suspecting this, put on a look of great fierceness but accepted the apology, and the pair shook hands.

Winkle's plan for finding Arabella Allen met now with a set-back. Sam Weller arrived at midnight and insisted that Winkle be waked at once. Once in his room, Sam told him Mr. Pickwick's instructions and declared he would not leave his sight till Winkle came back with him to Bath. This was awkward, but luckily, Mr. Pickwick himself, to whom Sam wrote, arrived next day and released his follower.

Mr. Pickwick approved of Winkle's determination to find the pretty Arabella, and so the next morning Sam Weller was sent on a voyage of discovery among the servants of the town. For many hours Sam searched in vain without a clue.

In the afternoon he sat in a lane running between rows of gardens in one of the suburbs, when a gate opened and a maid-servant came out to shake some carpets. Sam gallantly rose to help her, when she uttered a half-suppressed scream. It was Mary, the good-looking housemaid whom Sam had kissed at the house of Nupkins, the mayor of Ipswich, on the day of the arrest of the Pickwickians and the exposure of Jingle. She had left her place there for this new situation.

When Sam had finished his gallant speeches and Mary her blushing, he told her of Winkle's search. What was his surprise when she told him that Arabella was living the very next door. She let Sam come into the garden, and presently when Arabella came out to walk, he scrambled on to the wall and pleaded Winkle's cause.

"Ve thought ve should ha' been obliged to straitveskit him last night," he declared. "He's been a-ravin' all day; and he says if he can't see you afore to-morrow night's over, he vishes he may be somethin'-unpleasanted if he don't drownd hisself."

Arabella, in great distress at this prospect, promised she would be in the garden next evening, and Sam returned with the news to Mr. Pickwick and Winkle.

The next evening all three set out for the spot. Mary let them into the garden and, while Winkle climbed the wall to throw himself at Arabella's feet, Mr. Pickwick kept guard at the gate with a dark lantern. So far he threw its beam that a scientific gentleman who lived a few houses away, seeing the light from his window, took it for some new and wonderful freak of electricity and came out to investigate.

Before he arrived, however, Winkle had scrambled back over the wall and Arabella had run into the house. Seeing the scientific gentleman's head poked out of a garden-gate as they passed, Sam gave it a gentle tap with his fist and then, hoisting Mr. Pickwick on his back, and followed by Winkle, he ran off at full speed, leaving the scientific gentleman to go back to his room and write a long article about the wonderful light and to tell how he had received a shock of electricity which left him stunned for a quarter of an hour afterward.

The Pickwickians' stay at Bath came to an end soon after this adventure, and their leader, with Sam Weller, returned to London.

VIII

MR. PICKWICK'S EXPERIENCES IN THE DEBTORS' PRISON, WHERE HE FINDS AN OLD ENEMY AND HEAPS COALS OF FIRE ON THE HEAD OF MRS. BARDELL

Mr. Pickwick had not been long in London when his lawyer's warning proved too true. One morning a bailiff forced his way to his bedroom and, since he had not paid the damages to Mrs. Bardell, arrested him in bed, waited till he was dressed and carried him off to the debtors' prison.

The prison was called The Fleet. It was a gloomy building with a heavy gate, guarded by a turnkey, holding all classes, from laboring men to broken-down spendthrifts. Its filthy galleries, and low coffee-room reeked with tobacco smoke and its open court was noisy with the oaths of card-players. In some of the rooms lived men with their wives and whole families of children, and Mr. Pickwick found he would have to pay extra even to have a room to himself.

Caged with this coarse, vulgar crowd, Mr. Pickwick suffered greatly, but no idea of paying the unjust damages entered his mind. Instead, he busied himself with wandering about the prison and learning all he could of its customs and inmates. Those who, like himself, had money were well-treated. Those who had none lived in starvation and wretchedness. In one wall was a kind of iron cage, within which was posted a lean and hungry prisoner who rattled a money-box and called out: "Remember the poor debtors!" The money he collected from passers-by in the street was divided and bought food for the poorest.

As Mr. Pickwick entered the room given over to the latter class, he started. In one of its occupants, clad in tattered garments and yellow shirt, pinched with starvation and pale with illness, he saw Alfred Jingle; and near him, faithful still in rags and dirt, was Job Trotter.

Jingle was no longer jaunty and impudent. He had pawned all his belongings; had lived, in fact, for the last week on a silk umbrella with an ivory handle. His smile now was a mere twitch of the face as he said: "Nothing soon—starve—die—workhouse funeral—serve him right—all over—drop the curtain!" Unable, however, to keep up this make-believe recklessness, Jingle sat down at length and sobbed like a child.

Mr. Pickwick was greatly moved at the sight, and gave Job some money for his master as he turned away.

Sam Weller had come with Mr. Pickwick to the prison. The latter, however, told his servant he must now leave him, though his wages would go on as usual. Sam pretended to agree, but lost no time in going to his father with a plan by which he, too, should be sent to the Fleet Prison for debt, so as to be near his master. He borrowed some money from the old stage-driver, and then when he refused to pay it, his father had him arrested and sent to the prison as he wished. Old Tony Weller and all his friends went with him, and gave him three tremendous cheers at the door. When Mr. Pickwick saw Sam return and learned what he had done, he was much affected at the devotion of this faithful servant and felt himself more fond of him than ever.

It was a long time before Winkle, Tupman and Snodgrass learned of their leader's imprisonment and came to see him. Sam also had visitors in the person of his mother-in-law (who, of course, did not know he had brought about his own arrest) and the hypocritical, red-nosed preacher who came with her to lecture him on his evil ways.

Old Tony Weller came, too, with a plan that he had thought of for Mr. Pickwick's escape in a piano.

"It'll hold him easy," he whispered, "with his hat and shoes on, and breathe through the legs, vich is holler. Have a passage ready taken for 'Mericker. The 'Merikin gov'ment will never give him up when they finds as he's got money to spend, Sammy. Let him stop there till Mrs. Bardell's dead, then let him come back and write a book about the 'Merikins as'll pay all his expenses and more if he blows 'em up enough."

But Mr. Pickwick did not avail himself of this plan to escape to America. Day by day he wandered about the prison, learning its tales of misery and hopelessness, till his head and his heart ached and he could bear no more. For three months he remained there, shut up all day, stealing from his room only at night, and no entreaties would induce him to pay the money which was keeping him a prisoner.

Mrs. Bardell's lawyers meanwhile grew impatient. They had not been paid even the costs of the trial, and these Mrs. Bardell had agreed to pay if they won the suit. As Mr. Pickwick had not paid the damages, however, she had no money, and so the lawyers at last had her arrested, and she, too, was sent to the Fleet Prison. After a few hours there, Mrs. Bardell was willing to do anything to escape, and she agreed if Mr. Pickwick paid the costs, to release him from the damages.

Mr. Pickwick was still so indignant that he would possibly not have consented, but at this juncture Winkle entered, leading by the hand the beautiful girl who had been Arabella Allen, but whom he introduced now as Mrs. Winkle. He had run away with her from the old aunt's house, with the help of Mary, the pretty housemaid, and they had been married without the knowledge of Winkle's father. They had come to Mr. Pickwick to beg him to go and plead with old Mr. Winkle for forgiveness.

Arabella's tears and Winkle's plight proved too much for Mr. Pickwick's resolution. He paid Mrs. Bardell's costs and left Fleet Prison that very day, with Sam Weller, whose father, of course, immediately released him also.

IX

SNODGRASS GETS INTO DIFFICULTIES, BUT WINS HIS LADY-LOVE. THE ADVENTURES OF THE PICKWICKIANS COME TO AN END

Mr. Pickwick journeyed first to Bristol, to break the news of Arabella's marriage to her brother, Ben Allen. The latter was angry at first, but finally he and Bob Sawyer shook hands with the visitor and agreed to treasure no ill-feeling.

Both the young gentlemen insisted on going with Mr. Pickwick to the Winkle homestead—a circumstance which did not make that visit an easy one. Arabella's brother went fast asleep in the parlor while they waited, and when Bob Sawyer pinched him, as the old gentleman entered, he awoke with a shriek without the least idea where he was.

This was most embarrassing to Mr. Pickwick, but he said all he could for Winkle. The old gentleman, however, would send no message to his son, and Mr. Pickwick and Sam Weller returned with disappointment.

In London Sam found a letter awaiting him from his father. His mother-in-law was dead and the public house and its earnings were now the old stage-driver's. Sam went to see old Tony and found him terrified. All the widows in town were setting their caps for him and he was afraid one of them would succeed in marrying him. He had determined to sell out the business, give the money to Mr. Pickwick to invest for him, and keep to stage-driving so as to be safe.

While Sam sat with his father talking matters over, the red-nosed preacher came sidling in to inquire whether Mrs. Weller's will had not left some money for him. He felt so much at home that he went to the cupboard and poured himself out a big tumbler of his favorite pineapple rum. This was more than old Tony Weller could stand. He fell upon the old hypocrite, kicked him through the door and ducked him in the horse trough.

Mr. Pickwick, meanwhile, had been arranging to buy the release of Jingle and Job Trotter, and to send them to the West Indies, where they might have a chance to make an honest living. While he was attending to this at his lawyer's, a prolonged knock came at the door. It was Joe, Mr. Wardle's fat boy, erect, but gone fast asleep between his knocks.

Mr. Wardle came up from his carriage, delighted to see his old friend, of whose imprisonment he had just heard. He told Mr. Pickwick that his daughter Emily had fallen in love with Snodgrass, and that, discovering it, he had brought her to London to ask the advice of Mr. Pickwick in the matter. While they talked he sent the fat boy back to the inn to tell Emily that Mr. Pickwick would dine there with them.

The fat boy went on this errand, and coming suddenly into the inn sitting-room, discovered Emily, with her waist encircled with Snodgrass's arm while Arabella and her pretty housemaid were obligingly looking out of the window. There was but one thing to do: they bribed the fat boy not to tell!

Snodgrass, unluckily, stayed too long. As he was leaving, he heard Mr. Wardle, with Mr. Pickwick and Winkle, coming up the stair. He was obliged to retreat, and took refuge in Mr. Wardle's bedroom, from which there was no escape, save through the dining-room.

The dinner hour was a painful one to Emily, for the fat boy's secret kept him awake, and he winked at her and at Arabella so often that Mr. Wardle noticed it. The latter sent him into the bedroom finally for his snuff-box and he came out very pale, Mr. Snodgrass having seized him there, and begged him to tell some one secretly to release him.

Accordingly the fat boy made desperate efforts to attract Mr. Pickwick's attention—first by making faces at him when he thought no one else was looking and finally by running a pin into his leg. But this did not have the desired results. Mr. Pickwick concluded he was crazy, and Mr. Wardle was about to have him taken down stairs, when into the confusion, with a very red face, walked Snodgrass, out of the bedroom. He explained his presence there, declared his love for Emily, was forgiven on the spot and joined the dinner.

The happiness of all was complete when old Mr. Winkle arrived (having made up his mind to see his son's wife and judge for himself) and found Arabella so sweet that he kissed her and forgave Winkle on the instant.

Thus the last adventure of the Pickwickians ended happily. Mr. Pickwick had seen, before this, that the marriage of his companions would change his own life. He withdrew his name from the Pickwick Club (which thereupon went to pieces), and purchased a house near London for the entertainment of his friends, and there a few days later Snodgrass and Emily were married in the presence of Mr. Wardle and all the Pickwickians.

After the wedding, Snodgrass bought a farm near Dingley Dell where, with Emily, he lived many years, and was always accounted a great poet on account of his pensive and absent-minded manner. Winkle, with Arabella, settled a half-mile from Mr. Pickwick. Tupman never again fell in love, though for years his romantic air made him the admiration of numerous single ladies of the neighborhood.

Ben Allen and Bob Sawyer went to India as surgeons where (after having had yellow fever fourteen times) they became teetotalers and thereafter did well. Mrs. Bardell continued to let lodgings to single gentlemen, but never had another breach of promise suit. Old Tony Weller finally gave up business and retired to live on the interest of the money Mr. Pickwick had invested for him, having, to the end of his life, a great dislike for widows. His son, Sam, remaining faithful to his master, Mr. Pickwick at length made Mary, the pretty maid, his housekeeper, on condition that she marry Sam, which she did at once.

Mr. Pickwick lived happily, occupied in writing his adventures and in acting as godfather to the children of Snodgrass and Winkle. He never regretted what he had done for Jingle and Job Trotter, who became in time worthy members of society. He was a favorite with all and the children loved him. Every year he went to Mr. Wardle's to a large merrymaking, attended by his faithful Sam Weller, between whom and his master there was a regard that nothing but death could end.



LITTLE DORRIT

Published 1855-1857

Scene: London and Various Places on the Continent

Time: 1827 to 1830

CHARACTERS

Mr. Dorrit An inmate of the debtors' prison Known as "The Father of the Marshalsea." Later a wealthy man of the world

"Little Dorrit" His daughter Amy

Fanny His older daughter

"Tip" His son

Mrs. General His daughters' chaperon

Arthur Clennam Little Dorrit's champion

Mr. Clennam His father

Mrs. Clennam His supposed mother

Flintwinch A family servant Later Mrs. Clennam's partner in business

Affery His wife, and Mrs. Clennam's servant

Pancks A rent collector. Little Dorrit's friend

John Chivery The son of one of the prison turnkeys Little Dorrit's suitor

Maggy A half-witted woman

Doyce An inventor. Arthur's partner in business

Rigaud A blackmailing adventurer and jailbird

Mr. Tite Barnacle A self-important official in the "Circumlocution Office"

Mr. Merdle A supposedly wealthy man of affairs in London

Mrs. Merdle His wife

Mr. Meagles A business man. Arthur's friend

Mrs. Meagles His wife

"Pet" Their daughter

"Tattycoram" Pet's maid



LITTLE DORRIT

I

HOW ARTHUR CAME HOME FROM CHINA

A long, long time ago there lived in London a young man named Clennam. He was an orphan, and was brought up by a stern uncle, who crushed and repressed his youth and finally forced him to marry a cold, unfeeling, stubborn woman whom he did not in the least love.

Some time before this marriage, the nephew had met a beautiful young woman, also an orphan, whom a rich man named Dorrit was educating to be a singer, since she had a remarkable voice. Clennam had fallen in love with her and had persuaded her to give him all her love in return. There had even been a kind of ceremony of marriage between them.

But they were both very poor and could not really marry for fear of the anger of Clennam's cruel uncle, who finally compelled his nephew to marry the other woman, whom he had picked out for him. And the singer, because she loved him and could not bear to see him made a beggar, gave him up. So Clennam married one woman while loving another, and this, as all wrong things must do, resulted in unhappiness for them both.

The singer had given him a little silk watch-paper worked in beads with the initials D. N. F. These letters stood for the words, "Do Not Forget."

The wife saw the paper with her husband's watch in his secret drawer and wondered what it meant. One day she found an old letter, that had passed between her husband and the singer, which explained the initials and betrayed the secret of their love.

She was hard and unforgiving. Though she had never loved Clennam herself, her anger was terrible. She went to the singer, and under threat of for ever disgracing her in the eyes of the world, she made her give up to her her baby boy, Arthur, to rear as her own. She promised, in return, that the little Arthur should be provided for and should never know the real history of his parentage. She also compelled her husband and the singer to take an oath that neither would ever see or communicate with the other again.

Mrs. Clennam, in taking this terrible revenge, cheated herself into believing that she was only the instrument of God, carrying out His will and punishment. But in reality she was satisfying the rage and hatred of her own heart. Year by year she nursed this rage in the gloomy house in which Clennam lived and where he carried on the London branch of his business.

It was an old brick house separated from the street by a rusty courtyard. It seemed to have once been about to slide down sidewise, but had been propped up as though it leaned on some half-dozen gigantic crutches. Inside it was dark and miserable, with sunken floors and blackened furniture. In a corner of the sitting-room was an ugly old clock that was wound once a week with an iron handle, and on the walls were pictures showing the "Plagues of Egypt." The only pleasure the grim woman enjoyed was reading aloud from those parts of the Old Testament which call for dreadful punishments to fall upon all the enemies of the righteous, and in these passages she gloried.

In this melancholy place the boy Arthur Clennam grew up in silence and in dread, wondering much why they lived so lonely and why his father and mother (for so he thought Mrs. Clennam to be) sat always so silent with faces turned from each other.

There were but two servants, an old woman named Affery, and Flintwinch, her husband, a short, bald man, who was both clerk and footman, and who carried his head awry and walked in a one-sided crab-like way, as though he were falling and needed propping up like the house. Flintwinch was cunning and without conscience. Very few secrets his mistress had which he did not know, and they often quarreled.

At length the uncle, who had compelled the unhappy marriage of Arthur's father, died. Feeling sorry at the last for the wretched singer, whose life had been ruined, he left her in his will a sum of money, and another sum to the youngest niece of the man who had befriended and educated her—Mr. Dorrit.

This money, however, Mrs. Clennam did not intend either the woman she hated or the niece of her patron should get. She hid the part of the will which referred to it, and made Flintwinch (who, beside her husband, was the only one who knew of it) promise not to tell. Arthur's father she compelled to sail to China, to take charge of the branch of his business in that country, and when Arthur was old enough, she sent him there also.

For twenty years, while Arthur stayed with his father on the other side of the world, Mrs. Clennam, cold and unforgiving as ever, lived on in the old, tumbling house, carrying on the London business with the aid of Flintwinch.

The poor, forsaken singer lost her mind and at last died. Mr. Dorrit, of course, knowing nothing about the hidden will, could not claim his share, and the guilty secret remained (except for Arthur's unhappy father) in possession of only Mrs. Clennam and the crafty Flintwinch.

So the years rolled by, and Mrs. Clennam's cold gray eyes grew colder, her gray hair grayer and her face more hard and stony. She went out less and less, and finally paralysis made her keep to her room and her chair.

The time came when Arthur's father lay dying with his son beside him. On his death-bed he did not forget the money which had never been restored. He had not strength to write, but with his dying hand he gave Arthur his watch, making him promise to take it back to England to the wife whose anger and hatred still lived. The watch still held the little paper with the bead initials that stood for "Do not forget," and he meant thus to remind her of the wrong which was still unrighted.

Many times thereafter, on his way back to London, Arthur thought of his father's strange manner and wondered if it could be that some wrong deed lay on his conscience. This idea clung to him, so that when he saw Mrs. Clennam again on his arrival, and spoke to her of his father's last hours, he asked her if she thought this might be so. But at this her anger rose; she upbraided him and declared if he ever referred again to the subject she would renounce him as her son and cast him off for ever.

It was her guilty conscience, of course, that caused this burst of rage. And yet, just because it was not for the money's sake that she had done that evil act, but because she so hated the woman to whom it should have been given, she tried to convince herself that she had acted rightly, as the instrument of God, to punish wickedness. She had told herself this falsehood over and over again so often that she had ended by quite believing it to be the truth.

Arthur said no more to her about the matter. He was a man now, and his father's death had made him master of a very considerable fortune. He decided that he would not carry on the business, but would make a new one for himself. This resolution angered Mrs. Clennam greatly, but she grimly determined to carry it on herself, and in Arthur's place took the wily Flintwinch as her partner and told Arthur coldly to go his own way.

II

THE CHILD OF THE MARSHALSEA

On the first night of his return to the house of his childhood Arthur had noticed there a little seamstress, with pale, transparent face, hazel eyes and a figure as small as a child's. She wore a spare thin dress, spoke little, and passed through the rooms noiselessly and shy. They called her "Little Dorrit." She came in the morning and sewed quietly till nightfall, when she vanished. It had been so rare in the old days for any one to please the mistress of that gloomy house that the little creature's presence there interested Arthur greatly and he longed to know something of her history.

He soon found there was nothing to be learned from Flintwinch, and so one night he followed Little Dorrit when she left the house. To his great surprise he saw her finally enter a great bare building surrounded with spiked walls and called The Marshalsea.

This was a famous prison where debtors were kept. In those days the law not only permitted a man to be put in jail for debt, but compelled him to stay there till all he owed was paid—a strange custom, since while he was in jail he was unable to earn any money to pay with. In fact, in many cases poor debtors had to stay there all their lives.

Inside the walls of the Marshalsea the wives and children of unfortunate prisoners were allowed to come to live with them just as in a boarding-house or hotel, but the debtors themselves could never pass out of the gate. Arthur entered the prison ignorant of its rules and so stayed too long, for presently the bell for closing rang, the gates were shut, and he had to stay inside all night. This was not so pleasant, but it gave him a chance easily to find out all he wished to learn of Little Dorrit's history.

Her father, before she was born, had lost all his money through a business failure, and had thus been thrown into the Marshalsea. There Amy, or Little Dorrit, as they came to call her, was born; there her mother had languished away, and there she herself had always lived, mothering her pretty frivolous sister Fanny, and her lazy, ne'er-do-well brother, "Tip."

Her father had been an inmate of the prison so many years that he was called "The Father of the Marshalsea." From being a haughty man of wealth, he had become a shabby old white-haired dignitary with a soft manner, who took little gifts of money which any one gave him half-shame-facedly and to the mortification of Little Dorrit alone.

The child had grown up the favorite of the turnkeys and of all the prison, calling the high, blank walls "home." When she was a little slip of a girl she had her sister and brother sent to night-school for a time, and later taught herself fine sewing, so that at the time Arthur Clennam returned to London she was working every day outside the walls, for small wages. Each night she returned to the prison to prepare her father's supper, bringing him whatever she could hide from her own dinner at the house where she sewed, loving him devotedly through all.

She even had a would-be lover, too. The son of one of the turnkeys, a young man with weak legs and weak, light hair, soft-hearted and soft-headed, had long pursued her in vain. He was now engaged in seeking comfort for his hopeless love by composing epitaphs for his own tombstone, such as:

Here Lie the Mortal Remains of JOHN CHIVERY Never Anything Worth Mentioning Who Died of a Broken Heart, Requesting With His Last Breath that the Word AMY Might be Inscribed Over His Ashes Which Was Done by His Afflicted Parents

Old Mr. Dorrit held his position among the Marshalsea prisoners with great fancied dignity and received all visitors and new-comers in his room like a man of society at home. During that evening Arthur called on him and treated the old man so courteously and talked to Little Dorrit with such kindness that she began to love him from that moment.

Many things of Little Dorrit's pathetic story Arthur learned that night. His first surprise at finding her in the Clennam house mingled strangely with his old thought that his father on his death-bed seemed to be troubled by some remorseful memory; and as he slept in the gloomy prison he dreamed that the little seamstress was in some mysterious way mingled with this wrong and remorse.

There was more truth than fancy in this dream. Not knowing the true history of his parentage, and wholly ignorant of the sad life and death of the poor singer, his own unhappy mother, Arthur had never heard the name Dorrit. He did not know, to be sure, that it was the name of the wealthy patron who had once educated her. As a matter of fact, this patron had been Little Dorrit's own uncle, who now was living in poverty. It was to his youngest niece that the will Mrs. Clennam had wickedly hidden declared the money should go. And as Little Dorrit was this niece, it rightfully belonged to her. The real reason of Mrs. Clennam's apparent kindness to Little Dorrit was the pricking of her conscience, which gave her no rest.

But all this Arthur could not guess. Nevertheless, he had gained such an interest in the little seamstress that next day he determined to find out all he could about her father's unfortunate affairs.

He had great difficulty in this. The Government had taken charge of old Mr. Dorrit's debts, and his affairs were in the hands of a department which some people sneeringly called the "Circumlocution Office"—because it took so much time and talk for it to accomplish anything. This department had a great many clerks, every one of whom seemed to have nothing to do but to keep people from troubling them by finding out anything.

Arthur went to one clerk, who sent him to a Mr. Tite Barnacle, a fat, pompous man with a big collar, a big watch chain and stiff boots. Mr. Barnacle treated him quite as an outsider and would give him no information whatever. Then he tried another department, where they said they knew nothing of the matter. Still a third advised him not to bother about it. So at last he had to give up, quite discouraged.

Though he could do nothing for Little Dorrit's father, Arthur did what he could for her lazy brother. He paid his debts so that he was released from the Marshalsea, and this kindness, though Tip himself was ungrateful to the last degree, endeared him still more to Little Dorrit, who needed his friendship so greatly.

The night her brother was released she came to Arthur to thank him—alone save for a half-witted woman named Maggie, who believed she herself was only ten years old, and called Little Dorrit "Little Mother," and who used to go with her when she went through the streets at night. Little Dorrit was dressed so thinly and looked so slight and helpless that when she left, Arthur felt as if he would like to take her up in his arms and carry her home again.

It would have been better if he had. For when they got back to the Marshalsea the prison gates had closed for the night and they had to stay out till morning. They wandered in the cold street till nearly dawn; then a kind-hearted sexton who was opening a church let them come in and made Little Dorrit a bed of pew cushions, and there she slept a while with a big church-book for a pillow. Arthur did not know of this adventure till long afterward, for Little Dorrit would not tell him for fear he should blame himself for letting them go home alone.

Little Dorrit had one other valuable friend beside Arthur at this time. This was a rent collector named Pancks, who was really kind-hearted, but who was compelled to squeeze rent money out of the poor by his master. The latter looked so good and benevolent that people called him "The Patriarch," but he was at heart a genuine skinflint, for whose meanness Pancks got all the credit. Pancks was a short, wiry man, with a scrubby chin and jet-black eyes, and when he walked or talked he puffed and blew and snorted like a little steam-engine.

Little Dorrit used sometimes to go to sew at the house of "The Patriarch," and Pancks often saw her there. One day he greatly surprised her by asking to see the palm of her hand, and then he pretended to read her fortune. He told her all about herself (which astonished her, for she did not know that he knew anything of her history), and then, with many mysterious puffs and winks, he told her she would finally be happy. After that she seemed to meet Pancks wherever she went—at Mrs. Clennam's and at the Marshalsea as well—but at such meetings he would pretend not to know her. Only sometimes, when no one else was near, he would whisper:

"I'm Pancks, the gipsy—fortune-telling."



These strange actions puzzled Little Dorrit very much. But she was far from guessing the truth: that Pancks had for some time been interested (as had Arthur Clennam) in finding out how her father's affairs stood. He had discovered thus, accidentally, that old Mr. Dorrit was probably the heir at law to a great estate that had lain for years forgotten, unclaimed and growing larger all the time. The question now was to prove this, and this, Pancks, out of friendship for Little Dorrit, was busily trying to do.

One day the rent-collector came to Arthur to tell him that he had succeeded. The proof was all found. Mr. Dorrit's right was clear; all he had to do was to sign his name to a paper, and the Marshalsea gates would open and he would be free and a rich man.

Arthur found Little Dorrit and told her the glad tidings. They made her almost faint for joy, although all her rejoicing was for her father. Then he put her in a carriage and drove as fast as possible with her to the prison to carry her father the great news.

Little Dorrit told the old man with her arms around his neck, and as she clasped him, thinking that she had never yet in her life known him as he had once been, before his prison years, she cried:

"I shall see him as I never saw him yet—my dear love, with the dark cloud cleared away! I shall see him, as my poor mother saw him long ago! O my dear, my dear! O father, father! O thank God, thank God!"

So "The Father of the Marshalsea" left the old prison, in which he had lived so long, and all the prisoners held a mass-meeting and gave him a farewell address and a dinner.

On the last day, when they drove away from the iron gates, old Mr. Dorrit was in fine, new clothing, and Tip and Fanny were clad in the height of fashion. Poor Little Dorrit, in joy for her father and grief at parting from Arthur (for they were to go abroad at once), did not appear at the last moment, and Arthur, who had come to see them off, hastening to her room, found that she had fainted away. He carried her gently down to the carriage, and as he lifted her in, he saw she had put on the same thin little dress that she had worn on the day he had first seen her.

So, amid cheers and good wishes, they drove away, and Arthur, as he walked back through the crowded streets, somehow felt very lonely.

III

WHAT RICHES BROUGHT TO THE DORRITS

Great changes came to old Mr. Dorrit with his money. As they traveled slowly through Switzerland and into Italy, he put on greater dignity daily. He lived each day suspecting that every one was in some way trying to slight him and grew very much ashamed of his past years in the Marshalsea, and forbade all mention of them. He hired a great number of servants, and, to improve the manners of Fanny and Little Dorrit, he employed a woman named Mrs. General, who had many silly notions of society.

Little Dorrit could not even say "father" without being reproved by Mrs. General. "Papa is preferable, my dear," the lady would insist, "and, besides, it gives a pretty form to the lips. Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes and prisms are all good words for the lips. You will find it serviceable in the formation of a demeanor, if you say to yourself in company—on entering a room, for instance—'Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes and prisms!'"

Fanny and Tip were as spoiled as possible. Fanny, morning and night, thought of nothing but wearing costly dresses and "going into society," and Tip did little but play cards and bet on horse-races. Only Little Dorrit, through all, kept her old sweet self unchanged.

Wherever they went they lived in splendid hotels. In Venice the palace they occupied was six times as big as the whole Marshalsea. Mr. Dorrit, when he remembered Arthur Clennam at all, spoke of him as an upstart who had intruded his presence upon them in their poverty, and quickly forgot all his kindness and his efforts to help and comfort them.

But Little Dorrit never forgot. Her present existence seemed a dream. She tried to care for her father as she used to do, but he was afraid people would think he had not been used to servants (foolish man!) so she lost even the little pleasure of her old prison life in the Marshalsea. There were valets and maids now to do all the little things she had once loved to do with her own hands, and she seemed to be no longer of use to him. She loved her father as dearly as she always had, but now she had begun to feel that she could never see him as he used to be before his prison days, because first poverty and now wealth had changed him. The old sad shadow came over her. He grew angry at her and chid her, and hurt her. It seemed he had entirely forgotten the old days when she slaved so for him.

Poor little Dorrit! She was far lonelier now than she had ever been before in the debtors' prison—lonelier and unhappier than Arthur Clennam in London could have guessed. The gay, fashionable life of her brother and sister did not attract her. She was timid of joining in their gaieties. She asked leave only to be left alone, and went about the city in a gondola in a quiet, scared, lost manner. It often seemed to her as if the Marshalsea must be just behind the next big building, or Mrs. Clennam's house, where she had first met Arthur, just around the next corner. And she used to look into gondolas as they passed, as if she might see Arthur any minute.

In the days of their prison-poverty Fanny had occasionally earned some money by dancing at a theater. There she had met a silly, chuckle-headed young man, the son of a Mrs. Merdle, and he had been fascinated by her beauty. Now, in their wealth, he saw Fanny again and fell even more deeply in love with her. Mrs. Merdle was a cold-hearted, artificial woman, who kept a parrot that was always shrieking, and who thought of nothing but riches and society. She would have refused to let her son marry Fanny in the old days, but now it was another matter. He proposed, and Fanny, who had been made angry a thousand times by Mrs. Merdle's insolence and patronizing ways, made up her mind to marry him if only to take her revenge on his mother.

Mrs. Merdle's husband always stayed in London. He was immensely rich—so rich that people said everything he touched turned into gold. He was a quiet, dull man, with dull red cheeks, and cared nothing at all for society, though everybody flattered and courted him.

When old Mr. Dorrit saw Mrs. Merdle's son was in love with Fanny he was greatly pleased. He had by this time grown so selfish that he considered much less her happiness than his own profit, and he thought if they were married he could persuade Mr. Merdle to invest his own great fortune for him, so that he would be even richer than he was now. Mr. Merdle's name had been growing bigger and bigger every day. Nobody believed the great man could make a mistake, but that he was going to keep on getting richer and richer (though nobody knew how he did it) as long as he lived.

So, before long, Fanny married Mrs. Merdle's son, and went back to London to take up life in the magnificent Merdle mansion with her silly, chuckle-headed husband. Mr. Merdle had got a very rich position for him in the "Circumlocution Office" with which Arthur Clennam had had so much trouble once on a time.

Old Mr. Dorrit went to London, too, and, as he had schemed, gave the famous Mr. Merdle all his fortune to invest. Then he returned to Italy, where, in Rome, his faithful and lonely Little Dorrit waited lovingly for him.

On the night after he reached Rome Mrs. Merdle gave a dinner party to a large company, and Little Dorrit and her father attended.

In the midst of the dinner he suddenly called to her across the table. His voice was so loud and excited that all the guests were frightened and rose to their feet. Little Dorrit ran to him and put her arms about him, for she saw at once that he was not himself.

He began to address the company, and his first words showed that his mind had failed. He imagined he was still in the debtors' prison and that all the rich people about him were the other poor prisoners. He made them a speech, welcoming them to its walls, thanking them in advance for any money they might give to him as "The Father of the Marshalsea." And he ended by calling for the old turnkey he had known there to help him up the narrow stair to bed, as he had been used to do in the prison.

Little Dorrit was not ashamed—she loved him too much for that. Her only wish was to soothe him, and with a pale, frightened face, she begged him to come with her.

They got him away at last and carried him to his house. Once laid on his bed, he never rose from it again. Nor did he regain his memory of the immediate present. That, with its show and its servants, its riches and power, in which Little Dorrit had had so small a part, had faded out for ever, and now his mind, back in the Marshalsea, recognized his daughter as his only stay and faithful comfort.

It was well so, for this was the father she had most loved.

So she watched beside him day and night, while every day his life grew weaker and weaker. Every day the shadow of death stole deeper and deeper over his face, until one morning, when the dawn came, they saw that he would never wake again.

IV

WHAT HAPPENED TO ARTHUR CLENNAM

Arthur, meanwhile, had missed Little Dorrit greatly. He was very friendly with a couple named Meagles—a comely, healthy, good-humored and kind-hearted pair, and he was so lonely he almost thought himself in love with their daughter "Pet" for a while. But Pet soon married a portrait-painter and went to live abroad.

Mr. and Mrs. Meagles had a little orphan maid whom they called "Tattycoram," for no particular reason except that her first name had been Hattie, and the name of the man who founded the asylum where they found her was "Coram." Tattycoram had a very bad temper, so that Mr. Meagles, when he saw one of these fits coming on, used to stop and say, "Count twenty-five, Tattycoram." And Tattycoram would count twenty-five, and by that time the fit of temper was over.

But one day she had an attack that was very much worse than usual—so much worse that she couldn't wait to count twenty-five, and ran away. And it was a long time before they saw Tattycoram again.

At Mr. Meagles's house Arthur met an inventor named Doyce, a quiet, straightforward man, whom he soon came to like. Doyce had made a useful invention and for twelve years had been trying to bring it to the notice of the British Government. But this matter, too, had to go through the famous "Circumlocution Office," and so there it had stuck just as Arthur's inquiry had done.

Arthur having chosen no new business as yet, before long proposed a partnership between himself and Doyce. The latter agreed readily, and the new firm was established. Soon after this Doyce went abroad on business, leaving Arthur to manage the affairs.

All might have gone well but for the fame of Mr. Merdle. His wealth seemed so enormous, and his plans so sure, that many people throughout England, just as old Mr. Dorrit had done, put their money in his care. Even Pancks, the rent collector, did so, and strongly advised Arthur to do the same. Convinced by such advice Arthur was unhappily led to invest the money of the new firm in Merdle's schemes.

One day soon after, Mr. Merdle, whom every one had looked up to and respected, killed himself, and then to every one's astonishment it was found that his money was all gone, that his schemes were all exploded, and that the famous man who had dined and wined with the great was simply the greatest forger and the greatest thief that had ever cheated the gallows.

But it was too late then. Arthur's firm was utterly ruined with all the rest. What hurt him most was the knowledge that by using the firm's money he had ruined his honest partner, Doyce.

In order to set the latter as near right as he could, Arthur turned over every cent of his own personal fortune to pay as much of the firm's debt as it would, keeping nothing of value but his clothes and his books. Beside doing this, he wrote out a statement, declaring that he, Arthur Clennam, had of his own act and against his partner's express caution, used the firm's money for this purpose, and that he alone, and not Doyce, was to blame. He declared also that his own share (if any remained out of the wreck) should go to his partner, and that he himself would work as a mere clerk, at as small a salary as he could live on.

He published this statement at once, unwisely no doubt, when all London was so enraged against Merdle and glad to have some one on whom to vent its madness. In the public anger and excitement the generosity of his act was lost sight of. A few hours later a man who had invested some of his money in Arthur's firm, and thus lost it, had him arrested for debt, and that night he entered the dismal iron gates of the Marshalsea prison, not now as a visitor, but as one whom the pitiless bars locked in from liberty.

The turnkey took him up the old familiar staircase and into the old familiar room in which he had so often been. And as he sat down in its loneliness, thinking of the fair, slight form that had dwelt in it so long, he turned his face to the wall and sobbed aloud, "Oh, my Little Dorrit!"

Wherever he looked he seemed to see her, and just as she herself in a foreign country found herself looking and listening for his step and voice, so, too, it was with him.

In the days that followed he thought of her all the while. He was too depressed and too retiring and unhappy to mingle with the other prisoners, so he kept his own room and made no friends. The rest disliked him and said he was proud or sullen.

A burning, reckless mood soon added its sufferings to his dread and hatred of the place. The thought grew on him that he would in the end break his heart and die there. He felt that he was being stifled, and at times the longing to be free made him believe he must go mad. A week of this suffering found him in his bed in the grasp of a slow, wasting fever. He felt light-headed and delirious, and heard tunes playing that he knew were only in his brain.

One day when he had dragged himself to his chair by the window, the door of his room seemed to open to a quiet figure, which dropped a mantle it wore; then it seemed to be Little Dorrit in her old dress, and it seemed first to smile and then to burst into tears.

He roused himself, and all at once he saw that it was no dream. She was really there, kneeling by him now with her tears falling on his hands and her voice crying, "Oh, my best friend! Don't let me see you weep! I am your own poor child come back!"

No one had told her he was ill, for she had just returned from Italy. She made the room fresh and neat, sewed a white curtain for its window, and sent out for grapes, roast chicken and jellies, and every good thing. She sat by him all day, smoothing his hot pillow or giving him a cooling drink.

Though he had been strangely blind, he knew at last that she must have loved him all along. And to find her great heart turned to him thus in his misfortune made him realize that during all those months in the lonely prison he had been loving her, too, though he had not known it.

A feeling of peace came to him. Whenever he opened his eyes he saw her at his side—the same trusting Little Dorrit that he had always known.

V

"ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL"

All the while these things were happening, Mrs. Clennam and Flintwinch had continued their grim partnership.

Mrs. Clennam at last decided to burn the part of the will she had hidden, so that her share in the wicked plan could never be found out. Flintwinch, however, wishing for his own purposes to keep her in his power, deceived her. He cunningly put in its place a worthless piece of paper, and this Mrs. Clennam burned instead. Flintwinch then locked up the real piece in an iron box, with a lot of private letters that had been written by the poor crazed singer to Mrs. Clennam, begging her forgiveness. The box he gave to his brother, who took it to Holland with him for safe-keeping.

But Flintwinch, in this deception, overreached himself.

There was an adventurer in Holland named Rigaud, who used to drink and smoke with this brother. He was an oily villain, who had been in jail in France on suspicion of having murdered his wife. He had shaggy dry hair streaked with red, and a thick mustache, and when he smiled his eyes went close together, his mustache went up under his hooked nose, and his nose came down over his mustache. Rigaud saw the box, concluded it contained something valuable, and made up his mind to get it. His chance came when the brother of Flintwinch died suddenly one day, and he lost no time in making away with the iron box.

By means of the letters it contained, he soon guessed the secret which Mrs. Clennam had been for so many years at such pains to conceal, and, deciding that by this knowledge he could squeeze money out of her, he came to London to find and threaten her.

But she, believing she had burned the part of the will which Rigaud claimed to possess, refused to listen to him, until at last, maddened by her refusals, he searched out the Dorrits.

He soon discovered that the man who had educated the singer (Arthur's real mother) was Frederick Dorrit, Little Dorrit's dead uncle, and that it was Little Dorrit herself, since she was his youngest niece, from whom the money was now being unjustly kept.

Rigaud easily found Little Dorrit, for she was now in the Marshalsea nursing Arthur, where he lay sick, and to her the cunning adventurer sent a copy of the paper in a sealed packet, asking her, if it was not reclaimed before the prison closed that same night, to open and read it herself.

He then went to the Clennam house, told Mrs. Clennam and Flintwinch what he had done and demanded money at once as the price of his reclaiming the packet before Little Dorrit should learn the secret it held.

At this Flintwinch had to confess what he had done, and Mrs. Clennam knew that the fatal paper had not been burned, after all.

The wretched woman, seeing this sharp end to all her scheming, was almost distracted. She had not walked a step for twelve years, but now her excitement and frenzy gave her unnatural strength. She rose from her invalid chair and ran with all her speed from the house. Old Affery, the servant, followed her mistress, wringing her hands as she tried vainly to overtake her.

Mrs. Clennam did not pause till she had reached the prison and found Little Dorrit. She told her to open the packet at once and to read what it contained, and then, kneeling at her feet, she promised to restore to her all she had withheld, and begged her to forgive and to come back with her to tell Rigaud that she already knew the secret and that he might do his worst.

Little Dorrit was greatly moved to see the stern, gray-haired woman at her feet. She raised and comforted her, assuring her that, come what would, Arthur should never learn the truth from her lips. This return of good for evil from the one she had most injured brought the tears to the hard woman's eyes. "God bless you," she said in a broken voice.

Side by side they hastened back to the Clennam house, but as they reached the entrance of its dark courtyard there came a sudden noise like thunder. For one instant they saw the building, with the insolent Rigaud waiting smoking in the window; then the walls heaved, surged outward, opened and fell into pieces. Its great pile of chimneys rocked, broke and tumbled on the fragments, and only a huge mass of timbers and stone, with a cloud of dust hovering over it, marked the spot where it had stood.

The rotten old building, propped up so long, had fallen at last. For years old Affery had insisted that the house was haunted. She had often heard mysterious rustlings and noises, and in the mornings sometimes she would find little heaps of dust on the floors. Curious, crooked cracks would appear, too, in the walls, and the doors would stick with no apparent reason. These things, of course, had been caused by the gradual settling of the crazy walls and timbers, which now finally had collapsed all at once.

Frightened, they ran back to the street and there Mrs. Clennam's strange strength left her, and she fell in a heap upon the pavement.

She never from that hour was able to speak a word or move a finger. She lived for three years in a wheel-chair, but she lived—and died—like a statue.

For two days workmen dug industriously in the ruins before they found the body of Rigaud, with his head smashed to atoms beneath a huge beam.

They dug longer than that for the body of Flintwinch, and stopped at last when they came to the conclusion that he was not there. By that time, however, he had had a chance to get together all of the firm's money he could lay his hands on and to decamp. He was never seen again in England, but travelers claimed to have seen him in Holland, where he lived comfortably under the name of "Mynheer Von Flyntevynge"—which is, after all, about as near as one can come to saying "Flintwinch" in Dutch.

No one grieved greatly over his loss. It was long before Arthur knew of these events, and Little Dorrit was too happy in nursing him back to health to think much about it.

She was not content with this, either, but wrote to Mr. and Mrs. Meagles, who were abroad, of the sick man's misfortune. The former went at once in search of Doyce and brought him back to London, where together they set the firm of "Doyce and Clennam" on its feet again and arranged to buy Arthur's liberty. They did not tell Arthur anything of this, however, in order that they might surprise him.

Mr. Meagles, for Little Dorrit's sake, tried hard to find the fragment of the will which Rigaud had kept in the iron box. But it was Tattycoram, the little maid with the bad temper, who finally found it in a lodging Rigaud had occupied, and brought it to Mr. Meagles, praying on her knees that he take her back into his service, which, to be sure, he was very glad to do.

Arthur, while he was slowly growing better, had thought much of his condition. Though Little Dorrit had begged him again and again to take her money and use it as his own, he had refused, telling her as gently as he could that now that she was rich and he a ruined man, this could never be, and that, as the time had long gone by when she and the Marshalsea had anything in common, they two must soon part.

One day, however, when he was well enough to sit up, Little Dorrit came to his room in the prison and told him she had received a very great fortune and asked him again if he would not take it.

"Never," he told her.

"You will not take even half of it?" she asked pleadingly.

"Never, dear Little Dorrit!" he said emphatically.

Then, at last, she laid her face on his breast crying:

"I have nothing in the world. I am as poor as when I lived here in the Marshalsea. I have just found that papa gave all we had to Mr. Merdle and it is swept away with the rest. My great fortune now is poverty, because it is all you will take. Oh, my dearest and best, are you quite sure you will not share my fortune with me now?"

He had locked her in his arms, and his tears were falling on her cheek as she said joyfully:

"I never was rich before, or proud, or happy. I would rather pass my life here in prison with you, and work daily for my bread, than to have the greatest fortune that ever was told and be the greatest lady that ever was honored!"

But Arthur's prison life was to be short. For Mr. Meagles and Doyce burst upon them with all the other good news at once. Arthur was free, the firm had been reestablished with him at its head, and to-morrow the debtors' prison would be only a memory.

Next morning, before they left the Marshalsea for ever, Little Dorrit handed Arthur a folded paper, and asked him to please her by putting it into the fire with his own hand.

"Is it a charm?" he asked.

"It is anything you like best," she answered, standing on tiptoe to kiss him. "Only say 'I love you' as you do it!"

He said it, and the paper burned away. And so the will that had been the cause of so much pain and wrong was turned to ashes. Little Dorrit kept the promise she had made, and Arthur never learned of the sin of which the woman he had always called his mother had been guilty.

Then, when all good-bys had been said, they walked together to the very same church where Little Dorrit had slept on the cushions the night she had been locked out of the Marshalsea, and there she and Arthur were married. Doyce gave the bride away.

And among the many who came to witness the wedding were not only Pancks, and Maggie, the half-witted woman, but even a group of Little Dorrit's old turnkey friends from the prison—among whom was the disconsolate Chivery, who had so long solaced himself by composing epitaphs for his own tombstone, and who went home to meditate over his last inscription:

STRANGER! Respect the Tomb of JOHN CHIVERY, JUNIOR Who Died at an Advanced Age not Necessary to Mention. He Encountered His Rival and Felt Inclined To Have a Round with Him; But, for the Sake of the Loved One, Conquered Those Feelings of Bitterness and Became MAGNANIMOUS



LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT

Published 1843-1844

Scene: London, Neighboring Towns, New York and the Mississippi Valley

Time: 1842

CHARACTERS

Martin Chuzzlewit A young gentleman

Chuzzlewit His grandfather. A rich old man

Mary Graham Old Chuzzlewit's nurse and secretary

Jonas His grasping nephew

Chuffey An aged clerk to Jonas's father

Pecksniff An architect and hypocrite A distant relative of Old Chuzzlewit's

Charity His daughter

Mercy His daughter. Later, Jonas's wife

Tom Pinch A charity pupil of Pecksniff's

Ruth His sister

John Westlock One of Pecksniff's former pupils

Mark Tapley An assistant at a village inn Later, Martin's comrade in the United States

Bevan An American

Mrs. Todgers The proprietress of a London boarding-house

Montague Tigg A penniless adventurer Later known as "Tigg Montague," and president of the Anglo-Bengalee Company

"Sairey" Gamp A nurse

"Mrs. Harris" An imaginary friend of Sairey Gamp's

Nadgett A police spy



MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT

I

HOW MARTIN LEFT ENGLAND

Martin Chuzzlewit was the grandson of an old man who, from being poor, became so rich that he found not only that people bowed low and flattered him, but that many of his relatives were trying by every trick to get some of his money.

The old man was naturally suspicious and obstinate, and when he saw this he began to distrust everybody and to think the whole world selfish and deceitful. He had loved most of all his grandson, Martin, but at length his heart became hardened to him also.

This was partly Martin's own fault, for he was somewhat selfish, but he had, nevertheless, a great deal of good in him. And perhaps his selfishness was partly his grandfather's fault, too, because the latter had brought him up to believe he would inherit all his money and would sometime be very rich.

At last, ill and grown suspicious of every one he met, old Chuzzlewit gave a home to a beautiful orphan girl named Mary Graham, and kept her near him as his nurse and secretary. In order that she might not have any selfish interest in being kind to him, he took an oath in her presence that he would not leave her a cent when he died. He paid her monthly wages and it was agreed that there should be no affection shown between them.

In spite of his seeming harshness, Mary knew his heart was naturally kind, and she soon loved him as a father. And he, softened by her sympathy, came in spite of himself to love her as a daughter.

It was not long before young Martin, too, had fallen very deeply in love with Mary. He concluded too hastily, however, that his grandfather would not approve of his marrying her, and told the old man his intentions in such a fiery way that Chuzzlewit resented it.

The old man accused Martin of a selfish attempt to steal from him Mary's care, and at this, Martin, whose temper was as quick as his grandfather's flew to anger. They quarreled and Martin left him, declaring he would henceforth make his own way until he was able to claim Mary for his wife.

While he was wondering what he should do, Martin saw in a newspaper the advertisement of a Mr. Pecksniff, an architect, living near Salisbury, not many miles from London, who wished a pupil to board and teach. An architect was what Martin wanted to be, and he answered the advertisement at once and accepted Pecksniff's terms.

Now, to tell the truth, Martin had another reason for this. Pecksniff was his grandfather's cousin, and he knew the old man thought him the worst hypocrite of all his relatives, and disliked him accordingly. And Martin was so angry with his grandfather that he went to Pecksniff's partly to vex him.

Pecksniff was just the man old Chuzzlewit thought him. He was a smooth, sleek hypocrite, with an oily manner. He had heavy eyelids and a wide, whiskerless throat, and when he talked he fairly oozed virtuous sayings, for which people deemed him a most moral and upright man. He was a widower with two daughters, Charity and Mercy, the older of whom had a very bitter temper, which made it hard for the few students as long as they stayed there.

After Pecksniff had once got a pupil's money in advance, he made no pretense of teaching him. He kept him drawing designs for buildings, and that was all. If any of the designs were good, he said nothing to the pupil, but sold them as his own, and pocketed the money. His pupils soon saw through him and none of them had ever stayed long except one.

This one was named Tom Pinch. He had been poor and Mr. Pecksniff had pretended to take him in at a reduced rate. But really Pinch paid as much as the others, beside being a clever fellow who made himself useful in a thousand ways. He was a musician, too, and played the organ in the village church, which was a credit to Pecksniff.

With all this, Pinch was a generous, open-hearted lad, who believed every one honest and true, and he was so grateful to Pecksniff (whose hypocrisy he never imagined) that he was always singing his praises everywhere. In return for all this, Pecksniff treated him with contempt and made him quite like a servant.

Tom Pinch, however, was a favorite with every one else. He had a sister Ruth who loved him dearly, but he seldom saw her, for she was a governess in the house of a brass and iron founder, who did not like her to have company. One of Tom's greatest friends had been a pupil named John Westlock, who in vain had tried to open the other's eyes to Pecksniff's real character. When Westlock came into his money he had left and gone to live in London, and it was to take his vacant place that the new pupil Martin was now coming.

Another friend of Pinch's was Mark Tapley, a rakish, good-humored fellow, whose one ambition was to find a position so uncomfortable and dismal that he would get some credit for being jolly in it. Tapley was an assistant at The Blue Dragon, the village inn, whose plump, rosy landlady was so fond of him that he might have married her if he had chosen to. But, as Tapley said, there was no credit in being jolly where he was so comfortable, so he left The Blue Dragon and went off, too, to London.

With neither Westlock nor Mark Tapley there Tom Pinch was lonely and welcomed the arrival of Martin, with whom he soon made friends. Mr. Pecksniff folded his new pupil to his breast, shed a crocodile tear and set him to work designing a grammar-school.

Old Chuzzlewit soon heard where Martin his grandson was, and wrote to Pecksniff asking him to meet him in London. Pecksniff was so anxious to curry favor with the rich old man that, taking his daughters with him, he left at once for London, where they put up at a boarding-house kept by a Mrs. Todgers, while Pecksniff awaited the arrival of old Chuzzlewit.

Mrs. Todgers's house smelled of cabbage and greens and mice, and Mrs. Todgers herself was bony and wore a row of curls on the front of her head like little barrels of flour. But a number of young men boarded there, and Charity and Mercy enjoyed themselves very much.

One whom they met on this trip to London was a remote relative of theirs, a nephew of old Chuzzlewit's, named Jonas. Jonas's father was eighty years old and a miser, and the son, too, was so mean and grasping that he often used to wish his father were dead so he would have his money.

The old father, indeed, would have had no friend in his own house but for an old clerk, Chuffey, who had been his schoolmate in boyhood and had always lived with him. Chuffey was as old and dusty and rusty as if he had been put away and forgotten fifty years before and some one had just found him in a lumber closet. But in his own way Chuffey loved his master.

Jonas called on the two Pecksniff daughters, and Charity, the elder, determined to marry him. Jonas, however, had his own opinion, and made up his mind to marry Mercy, her younger sister.

Before long old Chuzzlewit reached London, and when Pecksniff called he told him his grandson, Martin, was an ingrate, who had left his protection, and asked the architect not to harbor him. Pecksniff, who worshiped the other's money and would have betrayed his best friend for old Chuzzlewit's favor, returned home instantly, heaped harsh names upon Martin and ordered him to leave his house at once.

Martin guessed what had caused Pecksniff to change his mind so suddenly, and with hearty contempt for his truckling action, he left that very hour in the rain, though he had only a single silver piece in his pocket. Tom Pinch, in great grief for his trouble, ran after him with a book as a parting gift, and between its leaves Martin found another silver piece—all Tom had.

Most of the way to London Martin walked. Once there he took a cheap lodging, and tried to find some vessel on which he could work his passage to America, for there, as he walked, he had made up his mind to go. But he found no such opportunity. His money gone, he pawned first his watch and then his other belongings, one by one, until he had nothing left, and was even in distress for food.

Yet his pride was strong, and he gave what was almost his last coin to escape the attentions of one Montague Tigg, a dirty, jaunty, bold, mean, swaggering, slinking vagabond of the shabby-genteel sort, whom he recognized as one who had more than once tried to squeeze money out of his grandfather.

At last, when he was almost in despair, a surprise came in the shape of an envelop addressed to himself, containing no letter, but a bank-note for a generous amount. There was no clue whatever to the sender, but the sum was enough to pay his passage and he determined therefore to sail next day.

While he was still wondering at this good luck, Martin chanced to come upon Mark Tapley, the old assistant at The Blue Dragon Inn. Tapley had found London too pleasant a place to be jolly in with any credit, and, as he had heard America was a very dismal place, he proposed to go with Martin.

As it happened, Tapley knew that Mary Graham was then in London, for he had seen old Chuzzlewit going into his house. When Martin learned this he sent a letter to her by Tapley, and she met him next morning in a little park near by. There he told her of his leaving Pecksniff's and of his coming voyage.

She was very sorrowful over his departure, but he cheered her by telling her he would soon return, well and prosperous, for her. She told him that Pecksniff seemed somehow to have made his grandfather trust him, and that by his advice they were both to move to The Blue Dragon Inn, near his house. Martin told her of Pecksniff's true character, warned her against him, and begged her to trust in Tom Pinch as a true friend. So they parted, pledging each other their love whatever befell.

Before Martin left next day Mary sent him a diamond ring, which he thought his grandfather had given her, but for which in reality she had paid all her savings, so that he should have with him something of value to sell if he be in want.

So Martin and Mark Tapley took ship for America, and Mary Graham and old Chuzzlewit went to live at The Blue Dragon, to the huge satisfaction of the oily Pecksniff, who thought now he could easily get the rich old man under his thumb.

II

PECKSNIFF AND OLD CHUZZLEWIT

After his first burst of anger at Martin's leaving him, old Chuzzlewit, to Mary's eyes, seemed to grow gradually a different man. He appeared more old and stooped and deaf, and took little interest in anything.