‘Your daughters are well?’ said old Martin, laying down his hat and stick.
Mr Pecksniff endeavoured to conceal his agitation as a father when he answered Yes, they were. They were good girls, he said, very good. He would not venture to recommend Mr Chuzzlewit to take the easy-chair, or to keep out of the draught from the door. If he made any such suggestion, he would expose himself, he feared, to most unjust suspicion. He would, therefore, content himself with remarking that there was an easy-chair in the room, and that the door was far from being air-tight. This latter imperfection, he might perhaps venture to add, was not uncommonly to be met with in old houses.
The old man sat down in the easy-chair, and after a few moments’ silence, said:
‘In the first place, let me thank you for coming to London so promptly, at my almost unexplained request; I need scarcely add, at my cost.’
‘At your cost, my good sir!’ cried Mr Pecksniff, in a tone of great surprise.
‘It is not,’ said Martin, waving his hand impatiently, ‘my habit to put my—well! my relatives—to any personal expense to gratify my caprices.’
‘Caprices, my good sir!’ cried Mr Pecksniff
‘That is scarcely the proper word either, in this instance,’ said the old man. ‘No. You are right.’
Mr Pecksniff was inwardly very much relieved to hear it, though he didn’t at all know why.
‘You are right,’ repeated Martin. ‘It is not a caprice. It is built up on reason, proof, and cool comparison. Caprices never are. Moreover, I am not a capricious man. I never was.’