`My good sir!' cried Mr. Pecksniff.

`Oh yes!' returned the other: `oh yes, certainly! oh to be sure! oh, of course! You hear him? You hear him? all of you!'

`What's the matter?' cried several voices.

`Oh nothing!' cried Spottletoe, still gasping. `Nothing at all! It's of no consequence! Ask him! He'll tell you!'

`I do not understand our friend,' said Mr. Pecksniff, looking about him in utter amazement. `I assure you that he is quite unintelligible to me.'

`Unintelligible, sir!' cried the other. `Unintelligible! Do you mean to say, sir, that you don't know what has happened! That you haven't decoyed us here, and laid a plot and a plan against us! Will you venture to say that you didn't know Mr. Chuzzlewit was going, sir, and that you don't know he's gone, sir?'

`Gone!' was the general cry.

`Gone,' echoed Mr. Spottletoe. `Gone while we were sitting here.

Gone. Nobody knows where he's gone. Oh, of course not! Nobody knew he was going. Oh, of course not! The landlady thought up to the very last moment that they were merely going for a ride; she had no other suspicion. Oh, of course not! She's not this fellow's creature. Oh, of course not!'

Adding to these exclamations a kind of ironical howl, and gazing upon the company for one brief instant afterwards, in a sudden silence, the irritated gentleman started off again at the same tremendous pace, and was seen no more.

It was in vain for Mr. Pecksniff to assure them that this new and opportune evasion of the family was at least as great a shock and surprise to him as to anybody else. Of all the bullyings and denunciations that were ever heaped on one unlucky head, none can ever have exceeded in energy and heartiness those with which he was complimented by each of his remaining relatives, singly, upon bidding him farewell.

The moral position taken by Mr. Tigg was something quite tremendous; and the deaf cousin, who had the complicated aggravation of seeing all the proceedings and hearing nothing but the catastrophe, actually scraped her shoes upon the scraper, and afterwards distributed impressions of them all over the top step, in token that she shook the dust from her feet before quitting that dissembling and perfidious mansion.

Mr. Pecksniff had, in short, but one comfort, and that was the knowledge that all these his relations and friends had hated him to the very utmost extent before; and that he, for his part, had not distributed among them any more love than, with his ample capital in that respect, he could comfortably afford to part with. This view of his affairs yielded him great consolation; and the fact deserves to be noted, as showing with what ease a good man may be consoled under circumstances of failure and disappointment.