t?' returned the young
lady.

Mr Jonas made no verbal rejoinder, but he glanced at Mercy with an odd
expression in his face; and said THAT wouldn't break his heart, she
might depend upon it. Then he looked on Charity with even greater favour
than before, and besought her, as his polite manner was, to 'come a
little closer.'

'There's another thing that's not easily overdone, father,' remarked
Jonas, after a short silence.

'What's that?' asked the father; grinning already in anticipation.

'A bargain,' said the son. 'Here's the rule for bargains--"Do other men,
for they would do you." That's the true business precept. All others are
counterfeits.'

The delighted father applauded this sentiment to the echo; and was so
much tickled by it, that he was at the pains of imparting the same to
his ancient clerk, who rubbed his hands, nodded his palsied head, winked
his watery eyes, and cried in his whistling tones, 'Good! good! Your own
son, Mr Chuzzlewit' with every feeble demonstration of delight that he
was capable of making. But this old man's enthusiasm had the redeeming
quality of being felt in sympathy with the only creature to whom he was
linked by ties of long association, and by his present helplessness. And
if there had been anybody there, who cared to think about it, some dregs
of a better nature unawakened, might perhaps have been descried through
that very medium, melancholy though it was, yet lingering at the bottom
of the worn-out cask called Chuffey.

As matters stood, nobody thought or said anything upon the subject; so
Chuffey fell back into a dark corner on one side of the fireplace, where
he always spent his evenings, and was neither seen nor heard again that
night; save once, when a cup of tea was given him, in which he was seen
to soak his bread mechanically. There was no reason to suppose that he
went to sleep at these seasons, or that he heard, or saw, or felt, or
thought. He remained, as it were, frozen up--if any term expressive of
such a vigorous process can be applied to him--until he was again thawed
for the moment by a word or touch from Anthony.

Miss Charity made tea by desire of Mr Jonas, and felt and looked so
like the lady of the house that she was in the prettiest confusion
imaginable; the more so from Mr Jonas sitting close beside her, and
whispering a variety of admiring expressions in her ear. Miss Mercy, for
her part, felt the entertainment of the evening to be so distinctly
and