But John assured him that he (Tom Pinch) was far
from doing justice to the character of Mr Pecksniff yet, if he supposed
that gentleman capable of performing a generous action; and that he
might make his mind quite easy on that head until he saw the sun turn
green and the moon black, and at the same time distinctly perceived with
the naked eye, twelve first-rate comets careering round those planets.
In which unusual state of things, he said (and not before), it might
become not absolutely lunatic to suspect Mr Pecksniff of anything
so monstrous. In short he laughed the idea down completely; and Tom,
abandoning it, was thrown upon his beam-ends again, for some other
solution.
In the meantime Tom attended to his duties daily, and made considerable
progress with the books; which were already reduced to some sort of
order, and made a great appearance in his fairly-written catalogue.
During his business hours, he indulged himself occasionally with
snatches of reading; which were often, indeed, a necessary part of
his pursuit; and as he usually made bold to carry one of these goblin
volumes home at night (always bringing it back again next morning, in
case his strange employer should appear and ask what had become of it),
he led a happy, quiet, studious kind of life, after his own heart.
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