Charles Dickens: Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit

48. Chapter Forty-eight (continued)

'Sit down, and take your breakfast, Mark,' said Tom. 'Make him sit down and take his breakfast, Martin.'

'Oh! I gave him up, long ago, as incorrigible,' Martin replied. 'He takes his own way, Tom. You would excuse him, Miss Pinch, if you knew his value.'

'She knows it, bless you!' said Tom. 'I have told her all about Mark Tapley. Have I not, Ruth?'

'Yes, Tom.'

'Not all,' returned Martin, in a low voice. 'The best of Mark Tapley is only known to one man, Tom; and but for Mark he would hardly be alive to tell it!'

'Mark!' said Tom Pinch energetically; 'if you don't sit down this minute, I'll swear at you!'

'Well, sir,' returned Mr Tapley, 'sooner than you should do that, I'll com-ply. It's a considerable invasion of a man's jollity to be made so partickler welcome, but a Werb is a word as signifies to be, to do, or to suffer (which is all the grammar, and enough too, as ever I wos taught); and if there's a Werb alive, I'm it. For I'm always a-bein', sometimes a-doin', and continually a-sufferin'.'

'Not jolly yet?' asked Tom, with a smile.

'Why, I was rather so, over the water, sir,' returned Mr Tapley; 'and not entirely without credit. But Human Natur' is in a conspiracy again' me; I can't get on. I shall have to leave it in my will, sir, to be wrote upon my tomb: "He was a man as might have come out strong if he could have got a chance. But it was denied him."'

Mr Tapley took this occasion of looking about him with a grin, and subsequently attacking the breakfast, with an appetite not at all expressive of blighted hopes, or insurmountable despondency.