ying at skittles in the Dragon,
making love-remonstrances to Mrs Lupin, getting his sea-legs on board
the Screw, travelling with old Tom Pinch on English roads, and burning
stumps of trees in Eden, all at once.

But whenever Martin gave him drink or medicine, or tended him in any
way, or came into the house returning from some drudgery without, the
patient Mr Tapley brightened up and cried: 'I'm jolly, sir; 'I'm jolly!'

Now, when Martin began to think of this, and to look at Mark as he lay
there; never reproaching him by so much as an expression of regret;
never murmuring; always striving to be manful and staunch; he began to
think, how was it that this man who had had so few advantages, was so
much better than he who had had so many? And attendance upon a sick bed,
but especially the sick bed of one whom we have been accustomed to see
in full activity and vigour, being a great breeder of reflection, he
began to ask himself in what they differed.

He was assisted in coming to a conclusion on this head by the frequent
presence of Mark's friend, their fellow-passenger across the ocean,
which suggested to him that in regard to having aided her, for example,
they had differed very much. Somehow he coupled Tom Pinch with this
train of reflection; and thinking that Tom would be very likely to have
struck up the same sort of acquaintance under similar circumstances,
began to think in what respects two people so extremely different were
like each other, and were unlike him. At first sight there was nothing
very distressing in these meditations, but they did undoubtedly distress
him for all that.

Martin's nature was a frank and generous one; but he had been bred up
in his grandfather's house; and it will usually be found that the
meaner domestic vices propagate themselves to be their own antagonists.
Selfishness does this especially; so do suspicion, cunning, stealth, and
covetous propensities. Martin had unconsciously reasoned as a child, 'My
guardian takes so much thought of himself, that unless I do the like by
MYself, I shall be forgotten.' So he had grown selfish.

But he had never known it. If any one had taxed him with the vice, he
would have indignantly repelled the accusation, and conceived himself
unworthily aspersed. He never would have known it, but that being newly
risen from a bed of dangerous sickness, to watch by such another couch,
he felt how nearly Self had dropped into the grave, and what a poor
depend