er temper, which made it hard for the few students as long as
they stayed there.

After Pecksniff had once got a pupil's money in advance, he made no
pretense of teaching him. He kept him drawing designs for buildings, and
that was all. If any of the designs were good, he said nothing to the
pupil, but sold them as his own, and pocketed the money. His pupils soon
saw through him and none of them had ever stayed long except one.

This one was named Tom Pinch. He had been poor and Mr. Pecksniff had
pretended to take him in at a reduced rate. But really Pinch paid as
much as the others, beside being a clever fellow who made himself useful
in a thousand ways. He was a musician, too, and played the organ in the
village church, which was a credit to Pecksniff.

With all this, Pinch was a generous, open-hearted lad, who believed
every one honest and true, and he was so grateful to Pecksniff (whose
hypocrisy he never imagined) that he was always singing his praises
everywhere. In return for all this, Pecksniff treated him with contempt
and made him quite like a servant.

Tom Pinch, however, was a favorite with every one else. He had a sister
Ruth who loved him dearly, but he seldom saw her, for she was a
governess in the house of a brass and iron founder, who did not like her
to have company. One of Tom's greatest friends had been a pupil named
John Westlock, who in vain had tried to open the other's eyes to
Pecksniff's real character. When Westlock came into his money he had
left and gone to live in London, and it was to take his vacant place
that the new pupil Martin was now coming.

Another friend of Pinch's was Mark Tapley, a rakish, good-humored
fellow, whose one ambition was to find a position so uncomfortable and
dismal that he would get some credit for being jolly in it. Tapley was
an assistant at The Blue Dragon, the village inn, whose plump, rosy
landlady was so fond of him that he might have married her if he had
chosen to. But, as Tapley said, there was no credit in being jolly where
he was so comfortable, so he left The Blue Dragon and went off, too, to
London.

With neither Westlock nor Mark Tapley there Tom Pinch was lonely and
welcomed the arrival of Martin, with whom he soon made friends. Mr.
Pecksniff folded his new pupil to his breast, shed a crocodile tear and
set him to work designing a grammar-school.

Old Chuzzlewit soon heard where Martin his grandson was, and wrote to
Pecksniff asking him to mee