ld keep her distance. "Mr. Pinch's being so well provided for
is owing to you alone, and we can only say how glad we are to hear that
he is as grateful as he ought to be."

"Oh, very well, Miss Pinch!" thought the pupil again. "Got a grateful
brother, living on other people's kindness!"

"It was very kind of you," said Tom Pinch's sister, with Tom's own
simplicity and Tom's own smile, "to come here--very kind indeed: though
how great a kindness you have done me in gratifying my wish to see you,
and to thank you with my own lips, you, who make so light of benefits
conferred, can scarcely think."

"Very grateful; very pleasant; very proper;" murmured Mr. Pecksniff.

"It makes me happy too," said Ruth Pinch, who, now that her first
surprise was over, had a chatty, cheerful way with her, and a
single-hearted desire to look upon the best side of everything, which
was the very moral and image of Tom; "very happy to think that you will
be able to tell him how more than comfortably I am situated here, and
how unnecessary it is that he should ever waste a regret on my being
cast upon my own resources. Dear me! So long as I heard that he was
happy and he heard that I was," said Tom's sister, "we could both bear,
without one impatient or complaining thought, a great deal more than
ever we have had to endure, I am certain." And if ever the plain truth
were spoken on this occasionally false earth, Tom's sister spoke it when
she said that.

"Ah!" cried Mr. Pecksniff, whose eyes had in the meantime wandered to
the pupil; "certainly. And how do _you_ do, my very interesting child?"

"Quite well, I thank you, sir," replied that frosty innocent.

"A sweet face this, my dears," said Mr. Pecksniff, turning to his
daughters. "A charming manner!"

Both young ladies had been in delight with the child of a wealthy house
(through whom the nearest road and shortest cut to her parents might be
supposed to lie) from the first. Mrs. Todgers vowed that anything
one-quarter so angelic she had never seen. "She wanted but a pair of
wings, a dear," said that good woman, "to be a young syrup"--meaning,
possibly, young sylph or seraph.

"If you will give that to your distinguished parents, my amiable little
friend," said Mr. Pecksniff, producing one of his professional cards,
"and will say that I and my daughters----"

"And Mrs. Todgers, pa," said Mercy.

"And Mrs. Todgers, of London," added Mr. Pecksniff, "that I, and my
daughters, and Mrs.