Page:Martin Chuzzlewit.djvu/107

Rh "I never saw such a fellow as you are, Pinch."

"Didn't you though?" said Tom. "Well, it's very likely you do find me strange, because I have hardly seen anything of the world, and you have seen a good deal I dare say?"

"Pretty well for my time of life," rejoined Martin, drawing bis chair still nearer to the fire, and spreading bis feet out on the fender. "Deuce take it, I must talk openly to somebody. I 'll talk openly to you, Pinch."

"Do!" said Tom. "I shall take it as being very friendly of you."

"I'm not in your way, am I?" inquired Martin, glancing down at Mr. Pinch, who was by this time looking at the fire over his leg.

"Not at all!" cried Tom.

"You must know then, to make short of a long story," said Martin, beginning with a kind of effort, as if the revelation were not agreeable to him: "that I have been bred up from childhood nth great expectations, and have always been taught to believe that I should be, one day, very rich. So I should have been, but for certain brief reasons which I am going to tell you, and which have led to my being disinherited."

"By your father?" enquired Mr. Pinch, with open eyes.

"By my grandfather. I have had no parents these many years. Scarcely within my remembrance."

"Neither have I," said Tom, touching the young man's hand with his own and timidly withdrawing it again. "Dear me!"

"Why as to that you know. Pinch," pursued the other, stirring the fire again, and speaking in his rapid, off-hand way: "it's all very right and proper to be fond of parents when we have them, and to bear them in remembrance after they 're dead, if you have ever known anything of them. But as I never did know anything about mine personally, you know, why I can't be expected to be very sentimental about 'em. And I am not: that's the truth."

Mr. Pinch was just then looking thoughfully at the bars. But on his companion pausing in this place, he started, and said "Oh! of course"—and composed himself to listen again.

"In a word," said Martin, "I have been bred and reared all my life by this grandfather of whom I have just spoken. Now, he has a great many good points; there is no doubt about that; I 'll not disguise the fact from you; but he has two very great faults, which are the staple of his bad side. In the first place, he has the most confirmed obstinacy of character you ever met with in any human creature. In the second, he is most abominably selfish."

"Is he indeed?" cried Tom.

"In those two respects," returned the other, "there never was such a man. I have often heard from those who know, that they have been, time out of mind, the failings of our family; and I believe there's some truth in it. But I can't say of my own knowledge. All I have to do, you know, is to be very thankful that they haven't descended to me, and to be very careful that I don't contract 'em."

"To be sure," said Mr. Pinch. "Very proper."

"Well, sir," resumed Martin, stirring the fire once more, and drawing