'All what? You must be prying and questioning!' he angrily retorted.
'What more do you want to know?'

'I want to know nothing, Jonas, but what you tell me. All hope of
confidence between us has long deserted me!'

'Ecod, I should hope so!' he muttered.

'But if you will tell me what you wish, I will be obedient and will
try to please you. I make no merit of that, for I have no friend in
my father or my sister, but am quite alone. I am very humble and
submissive. You told me you would break my spirit, and you have done so.
Do not break my heart too!'

She ventured, as she said these words, to lay her hand upon his
shoulder. He suffered it to rest there, in his exultation; and the whole
mean, abject, sordid, pitiful soul of the man, looked at her, for the
moment, through his wicked eyes.

For the moment only; for, with the same hurried return to something
within himself, he bade her, in a surly tone, show her obedience by
executing his commands without delay. When she had withdrawn he paced
up and down the room several times; but always with his right hand
clenched, as if it held something; which it did not, being empty. When
he was tired of this, he threw himself into a chair, and thoughtfully
turned up the sleeve of his right arm, as if he were rather musing
about its strength than examining it; but, even then, he kept the hand
clenched.

He was brooding in this chair, with his eyes cast down upon the ground,
when Mrs Gamp came in to tell him that the little room was ready. Not
being quite sure of her reception after interfering in the quarrel, Mrs
Gamp, as a means of interesting and propitiating her patron, affected a
deep solicitude in Mr Chuffey.

'How is he now, sir?' she said.

'Who?' cried Jonas, raising his head, and staring at her.

'To be sure!' returned the matron with a smile and a curtsey. 'What am I
thinking of! You wasn't here, sir, when he was took so strange. I never
see a poor dear creetur took so strange in all my life, except a patient
much about the same age, as I once nussed, which his calling was the
custom-'us, and his name was Mrs Harris's own father, as pleasant a
singer, Mr Chuzzlewit, as ever you heerd, with a voice like a Jew's-harp
in the bass notes, that it took six men to hold at sech times, foaming
frightful.'

'Chuffey, eh?' said Jonas carelessly, seeing that she went up to the
old, clerk, and looked at him. 'Ha!'

'The creetur's head's so hot,' said Mrs Gamp, 'that you m