The following morning Mr. Pecksniff announced that he must go to London.  “On professional business, my dear Martin; strictly on professional business; and I promised my girls long ago that they should accompany me.  We shall go forth to-night by the heavy coach—­like the dove of old, my dear Martin—­and it will be a week before we again deposit, our olive-branches in the passage.  When I say olive branches,” observed Mr. Pecksniff, in explanation, “I mean our unpretending luggage.”

“And now let me see,” said Mr. Pecksniff presently, “how can you best employ yourself, Martin, while I am absent.  Suppose you were to give me your idea of a monument to a Lord Mayor of London, or a tomb for a sheriff, or your notion of a cow-house to be erected in a nobleman’s park.  A pump is a very chaste practice.  I have found that a lamp-post is calculated to refine the mind and give it a classical tendency.  An ornamental turnpike has a remarkable effect upon the imagination.  What do you say to beginning with an ornamental turnpike?”

“Whatever Mr. Pecksniff pleased,” said Martin doubtfully.

“Stay,” said that gentleman.  “Come! as you’re ambitious, and are a very neat draughtsman, you shall try your hand on these proposals for a grammar-school.  When your mind requires to be refreshed by change of occupation, Thomas Pinch will instruct you in the art of surveying the back-garden, or in ascertaining the dead level of the road between this house and the finger-post, or in any other practical and pleasing pursuit.  There is a cart-load of loose bricks, and a score or two of old flower-pots in the back-yard.  If you could pile them up, my dear Martin, into any form which would remind me on my return, say, of St. Peter’s at Rome, or the Mosque of St. Sophia at Constantinople, it would be at once improving to you and agreeable to my feelings.”

The coach having rolled away, with the olive-branches in the boot and the family of doves inside, Martin Chuzzlewit and Tom Pinch were left together.  Now, there was something in the very simplicity of Pinch that invited confidences, and young Martin could not refrain from telling his story.

“I must talk openly to somebody,” he began, “I’ll talk openly to you.  You must know, then, that I have been bred up from childhood with great expectations, and have always been taught to believe that one day I should be very rich.  Certain things, however, have led to my being disinherited.”

“By your father?” inquired Tom.

“By my grandfather.  I have had no parents these many years.  Now, my grandfather has a great many good points, but he has two very great faults, which are the staple of his bad side.  He has the most confirmed obstinacy of character, and he is most abominably selfish; I have heard that these are failings of our family, and I have to be very thankful that they haven’t descended to me.  Now I come to the cream of my story, and the occasion of my being