d that gentleman. "Come! as you're ambitious, and are a very
neat draughtsman, you shall try your hand on these proposals for a
grammar-school. When your mind requires to be refreshed by change of
occupation, Thomas Pinch will instruct you in the art of surveying the
back-garden, or in ascertaining the dead level of the road between this
house and the finger-post, or in any other practical and pleasing
pursuit. There is a cart-load of loose bricks, and a score or two of old
flower-pots in the back-yard. If you could pile them up, my dear Martin,
into any form which would remind me on my return, say, of St. Peter's at
Rome, or the Mosque of St. Sophia at Constantinople, it would be at once
improving to you and agreeable to my feelings."

The coach having rolled away, with the olive-branches in the boot and
the family of doves inside, Martin Chuzzlewit and Tom Pinch were left
together. Now, there was something in the very simplicity of Pinch that
invited confidences, and young Martin could not refrain from telling his
story.

"I must talk openly to somebody," he began, "I'll talk openly to you.
You must know, then, that I have been bred up from childhood with great
expectations, and have always been taught to believe that one day I
should be very rich. Certain things, however, have led to my being
disinherited."

"By your father?" inquired Tom.

"By my grandfather. I have had no parents these many years. Now, my
grandfather has a great many good points, but he has two very great
faults, which are the staple of his bad side. He has the most confirmed
obstinacy of character, and he is most abominably selfish; I have heard
that these are failings of our family, and I have to be very thankful
that they haven't descended to me. Now I come to the cream of my story,
and the occasion of my being here. I am in love, Pinch. I am in love
with one of the most beautiful girls the sun ever shone upon. But she is
wholly and entirely dependent upon the pleasure of my grandfather; and
if he were to know that she favoured my passion, she would lose her home
and everything she possesses in the world. My grandfather, although I had
conducted myself from the first with the utmost circumspection, is full
of jealousy and mistrust, and suspected me of loving her. He said
nothing to her, but attacked me in private, and charged me with
designing to corrupt the fidelity to himself--observe his selfishness--
of a young creature who was his only