"Well!" cried Pinch, "you are the strangest young man, Mark, I ever knew in my life. I always thought so; but now I am quite certain of it. I am going to Salisbury, too. Will you get in? I shall be very glad of your company."
The young fellow made his acknowledgments and accepted the offer; stepping into the carriage directly, and seating himself on the very edge of the seat with his body half out of it, to express his being there on sufferance, and by the politeness of Mr. Pinch. As they went along, the conversation proceeded after this manner.
"I more than half believed, just now, seeing you so very smart," said Pinch, "that you must be going to be married, Mark."
"Well, sir, I've thought of that, too," he replied. "There might be some credit in being jolly with a wife, 'specially if the children had the measles and that, and was very fractious indeed. But I'm a'most afraid to try it. I don't see my way clear."
"You're not very fond of anybody, perhaps?" said Pinch.
"Not particular, sir, I think."
"But the way would be, you know, Mark, according to your views of things," said Mr. Pinch, "to marry somebody you didn't like, and who was very disagreeable."
"So it would, sir, but that might be carrying out a principle a little too far, mightn't it?"
"Perhaps it might," said Mr. Pinch. At which they both laughed gaily.
"Lord bless you, sir," said Mark, "you don't half know me, though. I don't believe there ever was a man as could come out so strong under circumstances that would make other men miserable, as I could, if I could only get a chance. But I can't get a chance. It's my opinion, that nobody never will know half of what's in me, unless something very unexpected turns up. And I don't see any prospect of that. I'm a going to leave the Dragon, sir."
"Going to leave the Dragon!" cried Mr. Pinch, looking at him with great astonishment. "Why, Mark, you take my breath away!"
"Yes, sir," he rejoined, looking straight before him and a long way off, as men do sometimes when they cogitate profoundly. "What's the use of my stopping at the Dragon? It an't at all the sort of place for me. When I left London (I'm a Kentish man by birth, though), and took that sitivation here, I quite made up my mind that it was the dullest little out-of-the-way corner in England, and that there would be some credit in being jolly under such circumstances. But, Lord, there's no dulness at the Dragon! Skittles, cricket, quoits, nine-pins, comic songs, choruses, company round the chimney corner every winter's evening—any man could be jolly at the Dragon. There's no credit in that."
"But if common report be true for once, Mark, as I think it is, being able to confirm it by what I know myself," said Mr. Pinch, "you are the cause of half this merriment, and set it going."
"There may be something in that, too, sir," answered Mark. "But that's no consolation."
