don't say anything. On the
contrary, I should scorn it. You had better walk in!'

There was something hidden here, which piqued Tom's interest and
troubled his tender heart. When, in a moment's irresolution, he looked
at Charity, he could not but observe a struggle in her face between
a sense of triumph and a sense of shame; nor could he but remark how,
meeting even his eyes, which she cared so little for, she turned away
her own, for all the splenetic defiance in her manner.

An uneasy thought entered Tom's head; a shadowy misgiving that the
altered relations between himself and Pecksniff were somehow to involve
an altered knowledge on his part of other people, and were to give him
an insight into much of which he had had no previous suspicion. And yet
he put no definite construction upon Charity's proceedings. He certainly
had no idea that as he had been the audience and spectator of her
mortification, she grasped with eager delight at any opportunity of
reproaching her sister with his presence in HER far deeper misery; for
he knew nothing of it, and only pictured that sister as the same giddy,
careless, trivial creature she always had been, with the same slight
estimation of himself which she had never been at the least pains
to conceal. In short, he had merely a confused impression that Miss
Pecksniff was not quite sisterly or kind; and being curious to set it
right, accompanied her as she desired.

The house-door being opened, she went in before Tom, requesting him to
follow her; and led the way to the parlour door.

'Oh, Merry!' she said, looking in, 'I am so glad you have not gone home.
Who do you think I have met in the street, and brought to see you! Mr
Pinch! There. Now you ARE surprised, I am sure!'

Not more surprised than Tom was, when he looked upon her. Not so much.
Not half so much.

'Mr Pinch has left Papa, my dear,' said Cherry, 'and his prospects are
quite flourishing. I have promised that Augustus, who is going that way,
shall escort him to the place he wants. Augustus, my child, where are
you?'

With these words Miss Pecksniff screamed her way out of the parlour,
calling on Augustus Moddle to appear; and left Tom Pinch alone with her
sister.

If she had always been his kindest friend; if she had treated him
through all his servitude with such consideration as was never yet
received by struggling man; if she had lightened every moment of those
many years, and had ever spared and never woun