Let me see the man who should give the cold shoulder to
anybody I chose to protect and patronise, if I were at the top of the
tree, Tom!'
'Now, I don't think,' said Mr Pinch, 'upon my word, that I was ever more
gratified than by this. I really don't.'
'Oh! I mean what I say,' retorted Martin, with a manner as free and easy
in its condescension to, not to say in its compassion for, the other, as
if he were already First Architect in ordinary to all the Crowned Heads
in Europe. 'I'd do it. I'd provide for you.'
'I am afraid,' said Tom, shaking his head, 'that I should be a mighty
awkward person to provide for.'
'Pooh, pooh!' rejoined Martin. 'Never mind that. If I took it in my head
to say, "Pinch is a clever fellow; I approve of Pinch;" I should like
to know the man who would venture to put himself in opposition to me.
Besides, confound it, Tom, you could be useful to me in a hundred ways.'
'If I were not useful in one or two, it shouldn't be for want of
trying,' said Tom.
'For instance,' pursued Martin, after a short reflection, 'you'd be a
capital fellow, now, to see that my ideas were properly carried out; and
to overlook the works in their progress before they were sufficiently
advanced to be very interesting to ME; and to take all that sort of
plain sailing.
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