`They've been carrying on this game,' thought Jonas in a brown study, `for the last two or three weeks. I never saw my father take so much notice of him as he has in that time. What! You're legacy hunting, are you, Mister Chuff? Eh?'

But Chuffey was as little conscious of the thought as of the bodily advance of Mr. Jonas's clenched fist, which hovered fondly about his ear. When he had scowled at him to his heart's content, Jonas took the candle from the table, and walking into the glass office, produced a bunch of keys from his pocket. With one of these he opened a secret drawer in the desk: peeping stealthily out, as he did so, to be certain that the two old men were still before the fire.

`All as right as ever,' said Jonas, propping the lid of the desk open with his forehead, and unfolding a paper. `Here's the will, Mister Chuff. Thirty pound a year for your maintenance, old boy, and all the rest to his only son, Jonas. You needn't trouble yourself to be too affectionate. You won't get anything by it. What's that?'

It was startling, certainly. A face on the other side of the glass partition looking curiously in: and not at him but at the paper in his hand. For the eyes were attentively cast down upon the writing, and were swiftly raised when he cried out. Then they met his own, and were as the eyes of Mr. Pecksniff.

Suffering the lid of the desk to fall with a loud noise, but not forgetting even then to lock it, Jonas, pale and breathless, gazed upon this phantom. It moved, opened the door, and walked in.

`What's the matter?' cried Jonas, falling back. `Who is it? Where do you come from? What do you want?'

`Matter!' cried the voice of Mr. Pecksniff, as Pecksniff in the flesh smiled amiably upon him. `The matter, Mr. Jonas!'

`What are you prying and peering about here for?' said Jonas, angrily. `What do you mean by coming up to town in this way, and taking one unawares? It's precious odd a man can't read the -- the newspaper -- in his own office without being startled out of his wits by people coming in without notice. Why didn't you knock at the door?'

`So I did, Mr. Jonas,' answered Pecksniff, `but no one heard me. I was curious,' he added in his gentle way as he laid his hand upon the young man's shoulder, `to find out what part of the newspaper interested you so much; but the glass was too dim and dirty.'

Jonas glanced in haste at the partition. Well. It wasn't very clean. So far he spoke the truth.

`Was it poetry now?' said Mr. Pecksniff, shaking the fore-finger of his right hand with an air of cheerful banter. `Or was it politics? Or was it the price of stock? The main chance, Mr. Jonas, the main chance, I suspect.'

`You ain't far from the truth,' answered Jonas, recovering himself and snuffing the candle: `but how the deuce do you come to be in London again? Ecod! it's enough to make a man stare, to see a fellow looking at him all of a sudden, who he thought was sixty or seventy mile away.'

`So it is,' said Mr. Pecksniff. `No doubt of it, my dear Mr. Jonas. For while the human mind is constituted as it is --'

`Oh, bother the human mind,' interrupted Jonas with impatience `what have you come up for?'

`A little matter of business,' said Mr. Pecksniff, `which has arisen quite unexpectedly.'

`Oh!' cried Jonas, `is that all? Well. Here's father in the next room. Hallo father, here's Pecksniff! He gets more addle-pated every day he lives, I do believe,' muttered Jonas, shaking his honoured parent roundly. `Don't I tell you Pecksniff's here, stupid head?'