"Then what are you making all this piece of work for," retorted her father, "if you didn't wish to have him?"
"Because I was treated with duplicity," said Cherry; "and because my own sister and my own father conspired against me. I am not angry with her,'" said Cherry, looking much more angry than ever. "I pity her. I'm sorry for her. I know the fate that's in store for her, with that Wretch."
"Mr. Jonas will survive your calling him a wretch, my child, I dare say," said Mr. Pecksniff with returning resignation: "But call him what you like and make an end of it."
"Not an end Pa," said Charity. "No, not an end. That's not the only point on which we're not agreed. I won't submit to it. It's better you should know that, at once. No; I won't submit to it indeed Pa! I am not quite a fool, and I am not blind. All I have got to say, is, I won't submit to it."
Whatever she meant, she shook Mr. Pecksniff now; for his lame attempt to seem composed, was melancholy in the last degree. His anger changed to meekness, and his words were mild and fawning.
"My dear," he said; "if in the short excitement of an angry moment I resorted to any unjustifiable means of suppressing a little outbreak calculated to injure you as well as myself—it's possible I may have done so; perhaps I did—I ask your pardon. A father asking pardon of his child" said Mr. Pecksniff "is, I believe, a spectacle to soften the most rugged nature."
But it didn't at all soften Miss Pecksniff: perhaps because her nature was not rugged enough. On the contrary she persisted in saying, over and over again, that she wasn't quite a fool, and wasn't blind, and Wouldn't submit to it.
"You labour under some mistake, my child!" said Mr. Pecksniff: "but I will not ask you what it is; I don't desire to know. No, pray!" he added, holding out his hand and colouring again, "let us avoid the subject my dear, whatever it is!"
"It's quite right that the subject should be avoided between us, Sir," said Cherry. "But I wish to be able to avoid it altogether, and consequently must beg you to provide me with a home."
Mr. Pecksniff looked about the room, and said "A home, my child!"
"Another home, Papa," said Cherry with increasing stateliness. "Place me at Mrs. Todgers's or somewhere, on an independent footing; but I will not live here, if such is to be the case."
It is possible that Miss Pecksniff saw in Mrs. Todgers's, a vision of enthusiastic men, pining to fall, in adoration, at her feet. It is possible that Mr. Pecksniff, in his new-born juvenility, saw in the suggestion of that same establishment, an easy means of relieving himself from an irksome charge in the way of temper and watchfulness. It is undoubtedly a fact that in the attentive ears of Mr. Pecksniff, the proposition did not sound quite like the dismal knell of all his hopes.
But he was a man of great feeling, and acute sensibility; and he squeezed his pocket-handkerchief against his eyes with both hands—as such men always do: especially when they are observed "One of my
