‘That’s all you know about it,’ returned Jonas, seating himself with a melancholy air. ‘He never was better than he is now. How are they all at home? How’s Charity?’
‘Blooming, Mr Jonas, blooming.’
‘And the other one; how’s she?’
‘Volatile trifler!’ said Mr Pecksniff, fondly musing. ‘She is well, she is well. Roving from parlour to bedroom, Mr Jonas, like a bee, skimming from post to pillar, like the butterfly; dipping her young beak into our currant wine, like the humming-bird! Ah! were she a little less giddy than she is; and had she but the sterling qualities of Cherry, my young friend!’
‘Is she so very giddy, then?’ asked Jonas.
‘Well, well!’ said Mr Pecksniff, with great feeling; ‘let me not be hard upon my child. Beside her sister Cherry she appears so. A strange noise that, Mr Jonas!’
‘Something wrong in the clock, I suppose,’ said Jonas, glancing towards it. ‘So the other one ain’t your favourite, ain’t she?’
The fond father was about to reply, and had already summoned into his face a look of most intense sensibility, when the sound he had already noticed was repeated.
‘Upon my word, Mr Jonas, that is a very extraordinary clock,’ said Pecksniff.
It would have been, if it had made the noise which startled them; but another kind of time-piece was fast running down, and from that the sound proceeded. A scream from Chuffey, rendered a hundred times more loud and formidable by his silent habits, made the house ring from roof to cellar; and, looking round, they saw Anthony Chuzzlewit extended on the floor, with the old clerk upon his knees beside him.