Augustus obeyed, and took Mrs. Todgers aside to pour his griefs into her friendly bosom.
“I am sure, Mr. Pinch,” said Charity, looking after her betrothed and glancing at her sister, “that I ought to be very grateful for the blessings I enjoy, and those which are yet in store for me. When I contrast Augustus”—here she was modest and embarrased—“who, I don’t mind saying to you, is all softness, mildness, and devotion, with the detestable man who is my sister’s husband; and when I think, Mr. Pinch, that in the dispensations of this world, our cases might have been reversed; I have much to be thankful for, indeed, and much to make me humble and contented.”
Contented she might have been, but humble she assuredly was not. Her face and manner experienced something so widely different from humility, that Tom could not help understanding and despising the base motives that were working in her breast. He turned away, and said to Ruth, that it was time for them to go.
“I will write to your husband,” said Tom to Merry, “and explain to him, as I would have done if I had met him here, that if he has sustained any inconvenience through my means, it is not my fault; a postman not being more innocent of the news he brings, than I was when I handed him that letter.”
“I thank you!” said Merry. “It may do some good.”
She parted tenderly from Ruth, who with her brother was in the act of leaving the room, when a key was heard in the lock of the door below, and immediately afterwards a quick footstep in the passage. Tom stopped, and looked at Merry.
It was Jonas, she said timidly.
“I had better not meet him on the stairs, perhaps,” said Tom, drawing his sister’s arm through his, and coming back a step or two. “I’ll wait for him here, a moment.”
He had scarcely said it when the door opened, and Jonas entered. His wife came forward to receive him; but he put her aside with his hand, and said in a surly tone:
“I didn’t know you’d got a party.”
As he looked, at the same time, either by accident or design, towards Miss Pecksniff; and as Miss Pecksniff was only too delighted to quarrel with him, she instantly resented it.
“Oh dear!” she said, rising. “Pray don’t let us intrude upon your domestic happiness! That would be a pity. We have taken tea here, sir, in your absence; but if you will have the goodness to send us a note of the expense, receipted, we shall be happy to pay it. Augustus, my love, we will go, if you please. Mrs. Todgers, unless you wish to remain here, we shall be happy to take you with us. It would be a pity, indeed, to spoil the bliss which this gentleman always brings with him, especially into his own home.”
“Charity! Charity!” remonstrated her sister, in such a heartfelt tone that she might have been imploring her to show the cardinal virtue whose name she bore.
“Merry, my dear, I am much obliged to you for your advice,” returned Miss Pecksniff, with a stately scorn—by the way, she had not been offered any—“but I am not his slave—”
“No, nor wouldn’t have been if you could,” interrupted Jonas. “We know all about it.”
“What did you say, sir?” cried Miss Pecksniff, sharply.
“Didn’t you hear?” retorted Jonas, lounging down upon a chair. “I am not a-going to say it again. If you like to stay, you may stay. If you like to go, you may go. But if you stay, please to be civil.”
“Beast!” cried Miss Pecksniff, sweeping past him. “Augustus! He is beneath your notice!” Augustus had been making some faint and sickly demonstration of shaking his fist. “Come away, child,” screamed Miss Pecksniff, “I command you!”
The scream was elicited from her by Augustus manifesting an intention to return and grapple with him. But Miss Pecksniff giving the fiery youth a pull, and Mrs. Todgers giving him a push they all three tumbled out of the room together, to the music of Miss Pecksniff’s shrill remonstrances.
All this time Jonas had seen nothing of Tom and his sister; for they were almost behind the door when he opened it, and he had sat down with his back towards them, and had purposely kept his eyes upon the opposite side of the street during his altercation with Miss Pecksniff, in order that his seeming carelessness might increase the exasperation of that wronged young damsel. His wife now faltered out that Tom had been waiting to see him; and Tom advanced.
The instant he presented himself, Jonas got up from his chair, and swearing a great oath, caught it in his grasp, as if he would have felled Tom to the ground with it. As he most unquestionably would have done, but that his very passion and surprise made him irresolute, and gave Tom, in his calmness, an opportunity of being heard.
“You have no cause to be violent, sir,” said Tom. “Though what I wish to say relates to your own affairs, I know nothing of them, and desire to know nothing of them.”
Jonas was too enraged to speak. He held the door open; and stamping his foot upon the ground, motioned Tom away.
“As you cannot suppose,” said Tom, “that I am here with any view of conciliating you or pleasing myself, I am quite indifferent to your reception of me, or your dismissal of me. Hear what I have to say, if you are not a madman! I gave you a letter the other day, when
