Page:Martin Chuzzlewit.djvu/694

596 in this way, but I do think so. I am as respectful disposed to you, Sir, as a man can be; but I do think so."

The light of a faint smile seemed to break through the dull steadiness of Martin's face, as he looked attentively at him, without replying.

"Yet you are an ignorant man, you say," he observed, after a long pause.

"Wery much so," Mr. Tapley replied.

"And I a learned, well-instructed man, you think?"

"Likewise wery much so," Mr. Tapley answered.

The old man, with his chin resting on his hand, paced the room twice or thrice before he added:

"You have left him this morning?"

"Come straight from him now, Sir."

"For what: does he suppose?"

"He don't know wot to suppose, Sir, no more than myself. I told him jest wot passed yesterday, Sir, and that you had said to me, 'Can you be here by seven in the morning?' and that you had said to him through me, 'Can you be here by ten in the morning?" and that I had said 'Yes' to both. That's all, Sir."

His frankness was so genuine that it plainly was all.

"Perhaps," said Martin, "he may think you are going to desert him, and to serve me?"

"I have served him in that sort of way, Sir," replied Mark, without the loss of any atom of his self-possession; "and we have been that sort of companions in misfortune; that my opinion is, he don't believe a word on it. No more than you do, Sir."

"Will you help me to dress? and get me some breakfast from the hotel?" asked Martin.

"With pleasure, Sir," said Mark.

"And by-and-by," pursued Martin, "remaining in the room, as I wish you to do, will you attend to the door yonder—give admission to visitors, I mean, when they knock."

"Certainly, Sir," said Mr. Tapley.

"You will not find it necessary to express surprise at their appearance," Martin suggested.

"Oh dear, no, Sir!" said Mr. Tapley, "not at all."

Although he pledged himself to this with perfect confidence, he was in a state of unbounded astonishment even now. Martin appeared to observe it, and to have some sense of the ludicrous bearing of Mr. Tapley under these perplexing circumstances; for in spite of the composure of his voice and the gravity of his face, the same indistinct light flickered on the latter several times. Mark bestirred himself, however, to execute the offices with which he was entrusted; and soon lost all tendency to any outward expression of his surprise, in the occupation of being brisk and busy.

But when he had put Mr. Chuzzlewit's clothes in good order for dressing, and when that gentleman was dressed and sitting at his breakfast, Mr. Tapley's feelings of wonder began to return upon him with great violence; and, standing beside the old man with a napkin under his arm (it was as natural and easy a joke to Mark to be a butler in