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228 angrily. "What do you mean by coming up to town in this way, and taking one unawares? It's precious odd a man can't read the—the newspaper in his own office without being startled out of his wits by people coming in without notice. Why didn't you knock at the door?"

"So I did Mr. Jonas," answered Pecksniff, "but no one heard me. I was curious," he added in his gentle way as he laid his hand upon the young man's shoulder, "to find out what part of the newspaper interested you so much; but the glass was too dim and dirty."

Jonas glanced in haste at the partition. Well. It wasn't very clean. So far he spoke the truth.

"Was it poetry now?" said Mr. Pecksniff, shaking the forefinger of his right hand with an air of cheerful banter. "Or was it politics? or was it the price of stocks? The main chance Mr. Jonas, the main chance I suspect."

"You ain't far from the truth," answered Jonas, recovering himself and snuffing the candle: "but how the deuce do you come to be in London again? Ecod! it's enough to make a man stare, to see a fellow looking at him all of a sudden, who he thought was sixty or seventy miles away."

"So it is," said Mr. Pecksniff. "No doubt of it my dear Mr. Jonas. For while the human mind is constituted as it is—"

"Oh bother the human mind," interrupted Jonas with impatience, "what have you come up for?"

"A little matter of business," said Mr. Pecksniff, "which has arisen quite unexpectedly."

"Oh!" cried Jonas, "is that all? Well! Here's father in the next room. Hallo father, here's Pecksniff! He gets more addle-pated every day he lives, I do believe," muttered Jonas, shaking his honoured parent roundly. "Don't I tell you Pecksniff's here, stupid-head?"

The combined effects of the shaking and this loving remonstrance soon awoke the old man, who gave Mr. Pecksniff a chuckling welcome, which was attributable in part to his being glad to see that gentleman, and in part to his unfading delight in the recollection of having called him a hypocrite. As Mr. Pecksniff had not yet taken tea (indeed he had but an hour before arrived in London) the remains of the late collation, with a rasher of bacon, were served up for his entertainment; and as Mr. Jonas had a business appointment in the next street, he stepped out to keep it: promising to return before Mr. Pecksniff could finish his repast.

"And now my good sir," said Mr. Pecksniff to Anthony: "now that we are alone, pray tell me what I can do for you. I say alone, because I believe that our dear friend Mr. Chuffey is, metaphysically speaking, a—shall I say a dummy?" asked Mr. Pecksniff with his sweetest smile, and his head very much on one side.

"He neither hears us," replied Anthony, "nor sees us,"

"Why then," said Mr. Pecksniff, "I will be bold to say, with the utmost sympathy for his afflictions, and the greatest admiration of those excellent qualities which do equal honour to his head and to his heart, that he is what is playfully termed a dummy. You were going to observe, my dear sir—"

"I was not going to make any observation that I know of," replied the old man.