When he
had communicated to Mr Pecksniff these pithy scraps of intelligence,
he said, 'That if it was all the same to him, he would turn him over
to father, and have a chat with the gals;' and in furtherance of
this polite scheme, he vacated his seat adjoining that gentleman, and
established himself in the opposite corner, next to the fair Miss Mercy.
The education of Mr Jonas had been conducted from his cradle on the
strictest principles of the main chance. The very first word he learnt
to spell was 'gain,' and the second (when he got into two syllables),
'money.' But for two results, which were not clearly foreseen perhaps by
his watchful parent in the beginning, his training may be said to have
been unexceptionable. One of these flaws was, that having been long
taught by his father to over-reach everybody, he had imperceptibly
acquired a love of over-reaching that venerable monitor himself.
The other, that from his early habits of considering everything as a
question of property, he had gradually come to look, with impatience,
on his parent as a certain amount of personal estate, which had no
right whatever to be going at large, but ought to be secured in that
particular description of iron safe which is commonly called a coffin,
and banked in the grave.
Pages:
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243