 the dim, dismal rooms; to tell him what lost documents were
decaying in forgotten corners of the shut-up cellars, from whose lattices such
mouldy sighs came breathing forth as he went past; to whisper of dark bins of
rare old wine, bricked up in vaults among the old foundations of the Halls; or
mutter in a lower tone yet darker legends of the cross-legged knights, whose
marble effigies were in the church. With the first planting of his foot upon the
staircase of his dusty office, all these mysteries increased; until, ascending
step by step, as Tom ascended, they attained their full growth in the solitary
labours of the day.
    Every day brought one recurring, never-failing source of speculation. This
employer; would he come to-day, and what would he be like? For Tom could not
stop short at Mr. Fips; he quite believed that Mr. Fips had spoken truly, when
he said he acted for another; and what manner of man that other was, became a
full-blown flower of wonder in the garden of Tom's fancy, which never faded or
got trodden down.
    At one time, he conceived that Mr. Pecksniff, repenting of his falsehood,
might, by exertion of his influence with some third person, have devised these
means of giving him employment. He found this idea so insupportable after what
had taken place between that good man and himself, that he confided it to John
Westlock on the very same day; informing John that he would rather ply for hire
as a porter, than fall so low in his own esteem as to accept the smallest
obligation from the hands of Mr. Pecksniff. 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
