hen he shook hands with them again; and then he introduced
his sister again; and then he did everything he had done already all
over again; and nothing Tom could do, and nothing Tom could say, was
half sufficient to express his joy at their safe return.

Mr Tapley was the first to resume his composure. In a very short space
of time he was discovered to have somehow installed himself in office as
waiter, or attendant upon the party; a fact which was first suggested to
them by his temporary absence in the kitchen, and speedy return with a
kettle of boiling water, from which he replenished the tea-pot with a
self-possession that was quite his own.

'Sit down, and take your breakfast, Mark,' said Tom. 'Make him sit down
and take his breakfast, Martin.'

'Oh! I gave him up, long ago, as incorrigible,' Martin replied. 'He
takes his own way, Tom. You would excuse him, Miss Pinch, if you knew
his value.'

'She knows it, bless you!' said Tom. 'I have told her all about Mark
Tapley. Have I not, Ruth?'

'Yes, Tom.'

'Not all,' returned Martin, in a low voice. 'The best of Mark Tapley is
only known to one man, Tom; and but for Mark he would hardly be alive to
tell it!'

'Mark!' said Tom Pinch energetically; 'if you don't sit down this
minute, I'll swear at you!'

'Well, sir,' returned Mr Tapley, 'sooner than you should do that, I'll
com-ply. It's a considerable invasion of a man's jollity to be made so
partickler welcome, but a Werb is a word as signifies to be, to do,
or to suffer (which is all the grammar, and enough too, as ever I wos
taught); and if there's a Werb alive, I'm it. For I'm always a-bein',
sometimes a-doin', and continually a-sufferin'.'

'Not jolly yet?' asked Tom, with a smile.

'Why, I was rather so, over the water, sir,' returned Mr Tapley; 'and
not entirely without credit. But Human Natur' is in a conspiracy again'
me; I can't get on. I shall have to leave it in my will, sir, to be
wrote upon my tomb: "He was a man as might have come out strong if he
could have got a chance. But it was denied him."'

Mr Tapley took this occasion of looking about him with a grin, and
subsequently attacking the breakfast, with an appetite not at all
expressive of blighted hopes, or insurmountable despondency.

In the meanwhile, Martin drew his chair a little nearer to Tom and his
sister, and related to them what had passed at Mr Pecksniff's
house; adding in few words a general summary of the distresses and
disapp