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said Mr Pecksniff, ‘entire and pure forgiveness is not incompatible with a wounded heart; perchance when the heart is wounded, it becomes a greater virtue. With my breast still wrung and grieved to its inmost core by the ingratitude of that person, I am proud and glad to say that I forgive him. Nay! I beg,’ cried Mr Pecksniff, raising his voice, as Pinch appeared about to speak, ‘I beg that individual not to offer a remark; he will truly oblige me by not uttering one word, just now. I am not sure that I am equal to the trial. In a very short space of time, I shall have sufficient fortitude, I trust to converse with him as if these events had never happened. But not,’ said Mr Pecksniff, turning round again towards the fire, and waving his hand in the direction of the door, ‘not now.’

      ‘Bah!’ cried John Westlock, with the utmost disgust and disdain the monosyllable is capable of expressing. ‘Ladies, good evening. Come, Pinch, it’s not worth thinking of. I was right and you were wrong. That’s small matter; you’ll be wiser another time.’

      So saying, he clapped that dejected companion on the shoulder, turned upon his heel, and walked out into the passage, whither poor Mr Pinch, after lingering irresolutely in the parlour for a few seconds, expressing in his countenance the deepest mental misery and gloom followed him. Then they took up the box between them, and sallied out to meet the mail.

      That fleet conveyance passed, every night, the corner of a lane at some distance; towards which point they bent their steps. For some minutes they walked along in silence, until at length young Westlock burst into a loud laugh, and at intervals into another, and another. Still there was no response from his companion.

      ‘I’ll tell you what, Pinch!’ he said abruptly, after another lengthened silence – ‘You haven’t half enough of the devil in you. Half enough! You haven’t any.’

      ‘Well!’ said Pinch with a sigh, ‘I don’t know, I’m sure. It’s compliment to say so. If I haven’t, I suppose, I’m all the better for it.’

      ‘All the better!’ repeated his companion tartly: ‘All the worse, you mean to say.’

      ‘And yet,’ said Pinch, pursuing his own thoughts and not this last remark on the part of his friend, ‘I must have a good deal of what you call the devil in me, too, or how could I make Pecksniff so uncomfortable? I wouldn’t have occasioned him so much distress – don’t laugh, please – for a mine of money; and Heaven knows I could find good use for it too, John. How grieved he was!’

      ‘He grieved!’ returned the other.

      ‘Why didn’t you observe that the tears were almost starting out of his eyes!’ cried Pinch. ‘Bless my soul, John, is it nothing to see a man moved to that extent and know one’s self to be the cause! And did you hear him say that he could have shed his blood for me?’

      ‘Do you want any blood shed for you?’ returned his friend, with considerable irritation. ‘Does he shed anything for you that you do want? Does he shed employment for you, instruction for you, pocket money for you? Does he shed even legs of mutton for you in any decent proportion to potatoes and garden stuff?’

      ‘I am afraid,’ said Pinch, sighing again, ‘that I am a great eater; I can’t disguise from myself that I’m a great eater. Now, you know that, John.’

      ‘You a great eater!’ retorted his companion, with no less indignation than before. ‘How do you know you are?’

      There appeared to be forcible matter in this inquiry, for Mr Pinch only repeated in an undertone that he had a strong misgiving on the subject, and that he greatly feared he was.

      ‘Besides, whether I am or no,’ he added, ‘that has little or nothing to do with his thinking me ungrateful. John, there is scarcely a sin in the world that is in my eyes such a crying one as ingratitude; and when he taxes me with that, and believes me to be guilty of it, he makes me miserable and wretched.’

      ‘Do you think he don’t know that?’ returned the other scornfully. ‘But come, Pinch, before I say anything more to you, just run over the reasons you have for being grateful to him at all, will you? Change hands first, for the box is heavy. That’ll do. Now, go on.’

      ‘In the first place,’ said Pinch, ‘he took me as his pupil for much less than he asked.’

      ‘Well,’ rejoined his friend, perfectly unmoved by this instance of generosity. ‘What in the second place?’

      ‘What in the second place?’ cried Pinch, in a sort of desperation, ‘why, everything in the second place. My poor old grandmother died happy to think that she had put me with such an excellent man. I have grown up in his house, I am in his confidence, I am his assistant, he allows me a salary; when his business improves, my prospects are to improve too. All this, and a great deal more, is in the second place. And in the very prologue and preface to the first place, John, you must consider this, which nobody knows better than I: that I was born for much plainer and poorer things, that I am not a good hand for his kind of business, and have no talent for it, or indeed for anything else but odds and ends that are of no use or service to anybody.’

      He said this with so much earnestness, and in a tone so full of feeling, that his companion instinctively changed his manner as he sat down on the box (they had by this time reached the finger-post at the end of the lane); motioned him to sit down beside him; and laid his hand upon his shoulder.

      ‘I believe you are one of the best fellows in the world,’ he said, ‘Tom Pinch.’

      ‘Not at all,’ rejoined Tom. ‘If you only knew Pecksniff as well as I do, you might say it of him, indeed, and say it truly.’

      ‘I’ll say anything of him, you like,’ returned the other, ‘and not another word to his disparagement.’

      ‘It’s for my sake, then; not his, I am afraid,’ said Pinch, shaking his head gravely.

      ‘For whose you please, Tom, so that it does please you. Oh! He’s a famous fellow! he never scraped and clawed into his pouch all your poor grandmother’s hard savings – she was a housekeeper, wasn’t she, Tom?’

      ‘Yes,’ said Mr Pinch, nursing one of his large knees, and nodding his head; ‘a gentleman’s housekeeper.’

      ‘He never scraped and clawed into his pouch all her hard savings; dazzling her with prospects of your happiness and advancement, which he knew (and no man better) never would be realised! He never speculated and traded on her pride in you, and her having educated you, and on her desire that you at least should live to be a gentleman. Not he, Tom!’

      ‘No,’ said Tom, looking into his friend’s face, as if he were a little doubtful of his meaning. ‘Of course not.’

      ‘So I say,’ returned the youth, ‘of course he never did. He didn’t take less than he had asked, because that less was all she had, and more than he expected; not he, Tom! He doesn’t keep you as his assistant because you are of any use to him; because your wonderful faith in his pretensions is of inestimable service in all his mean disputes; because your honesty reflects honesty on him; because your wandering about this little place all your spare hours, reading in ancient books and foreign tongues, gets noised abroad, even as far as Salisbury, making of him, Pecksniff the master, a man of learning and of vast importance. He gets no credit from you, Tom, not he.’

      ‘Why, of course he don’t,’ said Pinch, gazing at his friend with a more troubled aspect than before. ‘Pecksniff get credit from me! Well!’

      ‘Don’t I say that it’s ridiculous,’ rejoined the other, ‘even to think of such a thing?’

      ‘Why, it’s madness,’ said Tom.

      ‘Madness!’ returned young Westlock. ‘Certainly it’s madness. Who but a madman would suppose he cares to hear it said on Sundays, that the volunteer who plays the organ in the church, and practises on summer evenings in the dark, is Mr Pecksniff’s young man, eh, Tom? Who but a madman would suppose it is the game of such a man as he, to have his name in everybody’s mouth, connected with the thousand useless odds and ends you do (and which, of course, he taught you), eh, Tom?

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