‘Deceives you!’ cried Tom.
‘Swindles me,’ retorted Mr Tapley with a beaming face. ‘Turns his back on everything as made his service a creditable one, and leaves me high and dry, without a leg to stand upon. In which state I returns home. Wery good. Then all my hopeful wisions bein’ crushed; and findin’ that there ain’t no credit for me nowhere; I abandons myself to despair, and says, “Let me do that as has the least credit in it of all; marry a dear, sweet creetur, as is wery fond of me; me bein’, at the same time, wery fond of her; lead a happy life, and struggle no more again’ the blight which settles on my prospects.”’
‘If your philosophy, Mark,’ said Tom, who laughed heartily at this speech, ‘be the oddest I ever heard of, it is not the least wise. Mrs Lupin has said “yes,” of course?’
‘Why, no, sir,’ replied Mr Tapley; ‘she hasn’t gone so far as that yet. Which I attribute principally to my not havin’ asked her. But we was wery agreeable together—comfortable, I may say—the night I come home. It’s all right, sir.’
‘Well!’ said Tom, stopping at the Temple Gate. ‘I wish you joy, Mark, with all my heart. I shall see you again to-day, I dare say. Good-bye for the present.’
‘Good-bye, sir! Good-bye, Mr Pinch!’ he added by way of soliloquy, as he stood looking after him. ‘Although you are a damper to a honourable ambition. You little think it, but you was the first to dash my hopes. Pecksniff would have built me up for life, but your sweet temper pulled me down. Good-bye, Mr Pinch!’
While these confidences were interchanged between Tom Pinch and Mark, Martin and John Westlock were very differently engaged. They were no sooner left alone together than Martin said, with an effort he could not disguise:
‘Mr Westlock, we have met only once before, but you have known Tom a long while, and that seems to render you familiar to me. I cannot talk freely with you on any subject unless I relieve my mind of what oppresses it just now. I see with pain that you so far mistrust me that you think me likely to impose on Tom’s regardlessness of himself, or on his kind nature, or some of his good qualities.’
‘I had no intention,’ replied John, ‘of conveying any such impression to you, and am exceedingly sorry to have done so.’
‘But you entertain it?’ said Martin.