Charles Dickens: Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit

43. Chapter Forty-three (continued)

The company soon came tumbling out; insisting to each other that the Dragon clock was half an hour too fast, and that the thunder must have affected it. Impatient, wet, and weary though they were, Martin and Mark were overjoyed to see these old faces, and watched them with delighted interest as they departed from the house, and passed close by them.

'There's the old tailor, Mark!' whispered Martin.

'There he goes, sir! A little bandier than he was, I think, sir, ain't he? His figure's so far altered, as it seems to me, that you might wheel a rather larger barrow between his legs as he walks, than you could have done conveniently when we know'd him. There's Sam a-coming out, sir.'

'Ah, to be sure!' cried Martin; 'Sam, the hostler. I wonder whether that horse of Pecksniff's is alive still?'

'Not a doubt on it, sir,' returned Mark. 'That's a description of animal, sir, as will go on in a bony way peculiar to himself for a long time, and get into the newspapers at last under the title of "Sing'lar Tenacity of Life in a Quadruped." As if he had ever been alive in all his life, worth mentioning! There's the clerk, sir-- wery drunk, as usual.'

'I see him!' said Martin, laughing. 'But, my life, how wet you are, Mark!'

'I am! What do you consider yourself, sir?'

'Oh, not half as bad,' said his fellow-traveller, with an air of great vexation. 'I told you not to keep on the windy side, Mark, but to let us change and change about. The rain has been beating on you ever since it began.'

'You don't know how it pleases me, sir,' said Mark, after a short silence, 'if I may make so bold as say so, to hear you a-going on in that there uncommon considerate way of yours; which I don't mean to attend to, never, but which, ever since that time when I was floored in Eden, you have showed.'