‘I beg your pardon,’ said Tom, ‘I thought you wanted a word.’
‘I didn’t want that word,’ he rejoined. ‘I told you obstinacy was no part of my character, did I not? I was going to say, if you had given me leave, that a chief ingredient in my composition is a most determined firmness.’
‘Oh!’ cried Tom, screwing up his mouth, and nodding. ‘Yes, yes; I see!’
‘And being firm,’ pursued Martin, ‘of course I was not going to yield to him, or give way by so much as the thousandth part of an inch.’
‘No, no,’ said Tom.
‘On the contrary, the more he urged, the more I was determined to oppose him.’
‘To be sure!’ said Tom.
‘Very well,’ rejoined Martin, throwing himself back in his chair, with a careless wave of both hands, as if the subject were quite settled, and nothing more could be said about it—‘There is an end of the matter, and here am I!’
Mr Pinch sat staring at the fire for some minutes with a puzzled look, such as he might have assumed if some uncommonly difficult conundrum had been proposed, which he found it impossible to guess. At length he said:
‘Pecksniff, of course, you had known before?’