'I have said,' repeated the old man, 'that Jonas is sweet upon your
daughter.'
'A charming girl, sir,' murmured Mr Pecksniff, seeing that he waited
for an answer. 'A dear girl, Mr Chuzzlewit, though I say it, who should
not.'
'You know better,' cried the old man, advancing his weazen face at least
a yard, and starting forward in his chair to do it. 'You lie! What, you
WILL be a hypocrite, will you?'
'My good sir,' Mr Pecksniff began.
'Don't call me a good sir,' retorted Anthony, 'and don't claim to be
one yourself. If your daughter was what you would have me believe, she
wouldn't do for Jonas. Being what she is, I think she will. He might be
deceived in a wife. She might run riot, contract debts, and waste his
substance. Now when I am dead--'
His face altered so horribly as he said the word, that Mr Pecksniff
really was fain to look another way.
'--It will be worse for me to know of such doings, than if I was alive;
for to be tormented for getting that together, which even while I suffer
for its acquisition, is flung into the very kennels of the streets,
would be insupportable torture.
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