travelling clown into the country. He accompanied Mr. Pecksniff home for a few days' change of air and scene after his recent trials.
"Well," he said, at last with captivating bluntness "suppose you got one such son-in-law as me, what then?"
Mr. Pecksniff regarded him at first with inexpressible surprise; then gradually breaking into a sort of dejected vivacity, said:
"Then well I know whose husband he would be!"
"Whose?" asked Jonas, drily.
"My eldest girl's, Mr. Jonas," replied Pecksniff, with moistening eyes. "My dear Cherry's: my staff, my scrip, my treasure, Mr. Jonas. A hard struggle, but it is in the nature of things! I must one day part with her to a husband. I know it, my dear friend. I am prepared for it."
"Ecod! you've been prepared for that, a pretty long time, I should think," said Jonas.
"Many have sought to bear her from me," said Mr. Pecksniff, "All have failed. 'I never will give my hand, papa,'—those were her words, 'unless my heart is won.' She has not been quite so happy as she used to be, of late. I don't know why."
Again Mr. Jonas looked at the landscape; then at the coachman; then at the luggage on the roof; finally, at Mr. Pecksniff.
"I suppose you 'll have to part with the other one, some of these days?" he observed, as he caught that gentleman's eye.
"Probably," said the parent. "Years will tame down the wildness of my foolish bird, and then it will be caged. But Cherry, Mr. Jonas, Cherry—"
"Oh, ah!" interrupted Jonas. "Years have made her all right enough. Nobody doubts that. But you haven't answered what I asked you. Of course, you 're not obliged to do it, you know, if you don't like. You 're the best judge."
There was a warning sulkiness in the manner of this speech, which admonished Mr. Pecksniff that his dear friend was not to be trifled with or fenced off, and that he must either return a straight-forward reply to his question, or plainly give him to understand that he declined to enlighten him upon the subject to which it referred. Mindful in this dilemma of the caution old Anthony had given him almost with his latest breath, he resolved to speak to the point, and so told Mr. Jonas—enlarging upon the communication as a proof of his great attachment and confidence—that in the case he had put, to wit, in the event of such a man as he proposing for his daughter's hand, he would endow her with a fortune of four thousand pounds.
"I should sadly pinch and cramp myself to do so," was his fatherly remark; "but that would be my duty, and my conscience would reward me. For myself, my conscience is my bank. I have a trifle invested there—a mere trifle, Mr. Jonas—but I prize it as a store of value, I assure you."
The good man's enemies would have divided upon this question into two parties. One would have asserted without scruple that if Mr. Pecksniff's conscience were his bank, and he kept a running account there, he
