Tales from Dickens

by Hallie Erminie Rives; Charles Dickens

It was not long before young Martin, too, had fallen very deeply in love with Mary. He concluded too hastily, however, that his grandfather would not approve of his marrying her, and told the old man his intentions in such a fiery way that Chuzzlewit resented it.

The old man accused Martin of a selfish attempt to steal from him Mary's care, and at this, Martin, whose temper was as quick as his grandfather's flew to anger. They quarreled and Martin left him, declaring he would henceforth make his own way until he was able to claim Mary for his wife.

While he was wondering what he should do, Martin saw in a newspaper the advertisement of a Mr. Pecksniff, an architect, living near Salisbury, not many miles from London, who wished a pupil to board and teach. An architect was what Martin wanted to be, and he answered the advertisement at once and accepted Pecksniff's terms.

Now, to tell the truth, Martin had another reason for this. Pecksniff was his grandfather's cousin, and he knew the old man thought him the worst hypocrite of all his relatives, and disliked him accordingly. And Martin was so angry with his grandfather that he went to Pecksniff's partly to vex him.

Pecksniff was just the man old Chuzzlewit thought him. He was a smooth, sleek hypocrite, with an oily manner. He had heavy eyelids and a wide, whiskerless throat, and when he talked he fairly oozed virtuous sayings, for which people deemed him a most moral and upright man. He was a widower with two daughters, Charity and Mercy, the older of whom had a very bitter temper, which made it hard for the few students as long as they stayed there.

After Pecksniff had once got a pupil's money in advance, he made no pretense of teaching him. He kept him drawing designs for buildings, and that was all. If any of the designs were good, he said nothing to the pupil, but sold them as his own, and pocketed the money. His pupils soon saw through him and none of them had ever stayed long except one.

This one was named Tom Pinch. He had been poor and Mr. Pecksniff had pretended to take him in at a reduced rate. But really Pinch paid as much as the others, beside being a clever fellow who made himself useful in a thousand ways. He was a musician, too, and played the organ in the village church, which was a credit to Pecksniff.

With all this, Pinch was a generous, open-hearted lad, who believed every one honest and true, and he was so grateful to Pecksniff (whose hypocrisy he never imagined) that he was always singing his praises everywhere. In return for all this, Pecksniff treated him with contempt and made him quite like a servant.

Tom Pinch, however, was a favorite with every one else. He had a sister Ruth who loved him dearly, but he seldom saw her, for she was a governess in the house of a brass and iron founder, who did not like her to have company. One of Tom's greatest friends had been a pupil named John Westlock, who in vain had tried to open the other's eyes to Pecksniff's real character. When Westlock came into his money he had left and gone to live in London, and it was to take his vacant place that the new pupil Martin was now coming.

Another friend of Pinch's was Mark Tapley, a rakish, good-humored fellow, whose one ambition was to find a position so uncomfortable and dismal that he would get some credit for being jolly in it. Tapley was an assistant at The Blue Dragon, the village inn, whose plump, rosy landlady was so fond of him that he might have married her if he had chosen to. But, as Tapley said, there was no credit in being jolly where he was so comfortable, so he left The Blue Dragon and went off, too, to London.