Invoking this benediction on the heads of his young
friends with great fervour, he withdrew to his own
room; while they, being tired, soon fell asleep.
If Martin dreamed at all, some clue to the matter of
his visions may possibly be gathered from the after-pages
of this history. Those of Thomas Pinch were all
of holidays, church organs, and seraphic Pecksniffs.
It was some time before Mr Pecksniff dreamed at all,
or even sought his pillow, as he sat for full two
hours before the fire in his own chamber, looking
at the coals and thinking deeply. But he, too,
slept and dreamed at last. Thus in the quiet hours
of the night, one house shuts in as many incoherent
and incongruous fancies as a madman’s head.
Comprises, among other important
matters, Pecksniffian and architectural,
and exact relation of the
progress made by Mr pinch
in the confidence and friendship
of the new pupil
It was morning; and the beautiful Aurora, of whom
so much hath been written, said, and sung, did, with
her rosy fingers, nip and tweak Miss Pecksniff’s
nose. It was the frolicsome custom of the Goddess,
in her intercourse with the fair Cherry, so to do;
or in more prosaic phrase, the tip of that feature
in the sweet girl’s countenance was always very
red at breakfast-time. For the most part, indeed,
it wore, at that season of the day, a scraped and
frosty look, as if it had been rasped; while a similar
phenomenon developed itself in her humour, which was
then observed to be of a sharp and acid quality, as
though an extra lemon (figuratively speaking) had
been squeezed into the nectar of her disposition,
and had rather damaged its flavour.
This additional pungency on the part of the fair young
creature led, on ordinary occasions, to such slight
consequences as the copious dilution of Mr Pinch’s
tea, or to his coming off uncommonly short in respect
of butter, or to other the like results. But on
the morning after the Installation Banquet, she suffered
him to wander to and fro among the eatables and drinkables,
a perfectly free and unchecked man; so utterly to
Mr Pinch’s wonder and confusion, that like the
wretched captive who recovered his liberty in his
old age, he could make but little use of his enlargement,
and fell into a strange kind of flutter for want of
some kind hand to scrape his bread, and cut him off
in the article of sugar with a lump, and pay him those
other little attentions to which he was accustomed.
There was something almost awful, too, about the self-possession
of the new pupil; who ‘troubled’ Mr Pecksniff
for the loaf, and helped himself to a rasher of that
gentleman’s own particular and private bacon,
with all the coolness in life. He even seemed
to think that he was doing quite a regular thing,
