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28 I shall repeat that obnoxious word which has given you so much offence already. Why should I? What do I expect or want from you? There is nothing in your possession that I know of, Mr. Chuzzlewit, which is much to be coveted for the happiness it brings you."

"That's true enough," muttered the old man.

"Apart from that consideration," said Mr. Pecksniff, watchful of the effect he made, "it must be plain to you (I am sure) by this time, that if I had wished to [insinuate myself into your good opinion, I should have been, of all things, careful not to address you as a relative: knowing your humour, and being quite certain beforehand that I could not have a worse letter of recommendation."

Martin made not any verbal answer; but he as clearly implied, though only by a motion of his legs beneath the bed-clothes, that there was reason in this and he could not dispute it, as if he had said as much in good set terms.

"No," said Mr. Pecksniff, keeping his hand in his waistcoat as though he were ready, on the shortest notice, to produce his heart for Martin Chuzzlewit's inspection, "I came here to offer my services to a stranger. I make no offer of them to you, because I know you would distrust me if I did. But lying on that bed, sir, I regard you as a stranger, and I have just that amount of interest in you which I hope I should feel in any stranger, circumstanced as you are. Beyond that, I am quite as indifferent to you, Mr. Chuzzlewit, as you are to me."

Having said which, Mr. Pecksniff threw himself back in the easy chair: so radiant with ingenuous honesty, that Mrs, Lupin almost wondered not to see a stained-glass Glory, such as the Saint wore in the church, shining about his head.

A long pause succeeded. The old man, with increased restlessness, changed his posture several times. Mrs, Lupin and the young lady gazed in silence at the counterpane. Mr, Pecksniff toyed abstractedly with his eye-glass, and kept his eyes shut, that he might ruminate the better.

"Eh?" he said at last: opening them suddenly, and looking towards the bed. "I beg your pardon. I thought you spoke. Mrs. Lupin," he continued, slowly rising, "I am not aware that I can be of any service to you here. The gentleman is better, and you are as good a nurse as he can have. Eh?"

This last note of interrogation bore reference to another change of posture on the old man's part, which brought his face towards Mr. Pecksniff for the first time since he had turned away from him.

"If you desire to speak to me before I go, sir," continued that gentleman, after another pause, "you may command my leisure; but I must stipulate, in justice to myself, that you do so as to a stranger: strictly as to a stranger."

Now if Mr. Pecksniff knew, from anything Martin Chuzzlewit had expressed in gestures, that he wanted to speak to him, he could only have found it out on some such principle as prevails in melodramas, and in virtue of which the elderly farmer with the comic son always knows what the dumb-girl means when she takes refuge in his garden, and