an angry moment I
resorted to an unjustifiable means of suppressing a little outbreak
calculated to injure you as well as myself--it's possible I may have
done so; perhaps I did--I ask your pardon. A father asking pardon of
his child,' said Mr Pecksniff, 'is, I believe, a spectacle to soften the
most rugged nature.'

But it didn't at all soften Miss Pecksniff; perhaps because her nature
was not rugged enough. On the contrary, she persisted in saying, over
and over again, that she wasn't quite a fool, and wasn't blind, and
wouldn't submit to it.

'You labour under some mistake, my child!' said Mr Pecksniff, 'but
I will not ask you what it is; I don't desire to know. No, pray!' he
added, holding out his hand and colouring again, 'let us avoid the
subject, my dear, whatever it is!'

'It's quite right that the subject should be avoided between us,
sir,' said Cherry. 'But I wish to be able to avoid it altogether, and
consequently must beg you to provide me with a home.'

Mr Pecksniff looked about the room, and said, 'A home, my child!'

'Another home, papa,' said Cherry, with increasing stateliness 'Place me
at Mrs Todgers's or somewhere, on an independent footing; but I will not
live here, if such is to be the case.'

It is possible that Miss Pecksniff saw in Mrs Todgers's a vision
of enthusiastic men, pining to fall in adoration at her feet. It is
possible that Mr Pecksniff, in his new-born juvenility, saw, in the
suggestion of that same establishment, an easy means of relieving
himself from an irksome charge in the way of temper and watchfulness.
It is undoubtedly a fact that in the attentive ears of Mr Pecksniff, the
proposition did not sound quite like the dismal knell of all his hopes.

But he was a man of great feeling and acute sensibility; and he squeezed
his pocket-handkerchief against his eyes with both hands--as such men
always do, especially when they are observed. 'One of my birds,' Mr
Pecksniff said, 'has left me for the stranger's breast; the other would
take wing to Todgers's! Well, well, what am I? I don't know what I am,
exactly. Never mind!'

Even this remark, made more pathetic perhaps by his breaking down in
the middle of it, had no effect upon Charity. She was grim, rigid, and
inflexible.

'But I have ever,' said Mr Pecksniff, 'sacrificed my children's
happiness to my own--I mean my own happiness to my children's--and I
will not begin to regulate my life by other rules of conduct now. If you