 forget him, nor could she ever cease to think of him with feelings
of the liveliest friendship; but people had begun to talk, the thing had been
observed, and it was necessary that they should be nothing more to each other,
than any gentleman and lady in society usually are. She was glad she had had the
resolution to say thus much before her feelings had been tried too far; they had
been greatly tried, she would admit; but though she was weak and silly, she
would soon get the better of it, she hoped.
    Moddle, who had by this time become in the last degree maudlin, and wept
abundantly, inferred from the foregoing avowal, that it was his mission to
communicate to others the blight which had fallen on himself; and that, being a
kind of unintentional Vampire, he had had Miss Pecksniff assigned to him by the
Fates, as Victim Number One. Miss Pecksniff controverting this opinion as
sinful, Moddle was goaded on to ask whether she could be contented with a
blighted heart; and it appearing on further examination that she could be,
plighted his dismal troth, which was accepted and returned.
    He bore his good fortune with the utmost moderation. Instead of being
triumphant, he shed more tears than he had ever been known to shed before: and,
sobbing, said:
    »Oh! what a day this has been! I can't go back to the office this afternoon.
Oh, what a trying day this has been, Good Gracious!«
 

                                 Chapter XXXIII

    Further Proceedings in Eden, and a Proceeding Out of It. Martin Makes a
                         Discovery of Some Importance.

From Mr. Moddle to Eden is an easy and natural transition. Mr. Moddle, living in
the atmosphere of Miss Pecksniff's love, dwelt (if he had but known it) in a
terrestrial Paradise. The thriving city of Eden was also a terrestrial Paradise,
upon the showing of its proprietors. The beautiful Miss Pecksniff might have
been poetically described as a something too good for man in his fallen and
degraded state. That was exactly the character of the thriving city of Eden, as
poetically heightened by Zephaniah Scadder, General Choke, and other worthies:
part and parcel of the talons of that great American Eagle, which is always
airing itself sky-high in purest æther, and never, no never, never, tumbles down
with draggled wings into the mud.
    When Mark Tapley, leaving Martin in the architectural and surveying offices,
had effectually strengthened and encouraged his own spirits by the contemplation
of their joint misfortunes, he proceeded, with new cheerfulness,
