olly was really a credit to anybody. He
always insisted that he was in great spirits, and when he was weakest
and could not speak he wrote "jolly" on a slate for Martin to see.

Watching beside his friend day by day, Martin came to know himself truly
and to see his own selfishness. As he nursed Tapley to health again he
determined to root it out of his nature and to return to England a
nobler man. He began to think not of what he had sacrificed for Mary,
but of what she would have sacrificed for him, and to wish with all his
heart that he had not parted from his grandfather in anger. And even
before Tapley was able to sit up Martin had determined to return as soon
as possible to England.

He laid aside his pride and wrote to Bevan, who had befriended them in
New York, to borrow money enough to bring them both to that city. Once
there, Tapley found a position as cook in the same ship that had brought
them from England and his wages proved sufficient to pay for Martin's
passage.

So Martin started back to the home he had parted from a year before,
poorer than he had left it, but at heart a better and a sounder man. His
false pride was gone now. He mingled with others and helped them, and by
the time they landed he was as popular a passenger as Mark Tapley was a
cook.

Almost the first man they saw on landing, curiously enough, was the oily
Pecksniff. They saw him escorted along the street, pointed out by the
crowds as "the great architect." On that day the corner stone of a
splendid public building was to be laid, and Pecksniff's design for
this structure had taken the prize. The two comrades went with the crowd
to hear Pecksniff's speech, and looking over a gentleman's shoulder at a
picture of the building as it was to look, Martin saw that it was the
very grammar school he himself had designed when he had first come to
Pecksniff's. The old rascal had stolen the plans!

Martin was angry, of course, but there was no help for it, and besides
he had other things to think of. Mary Graham, to be sure, was his first
thought, and he and Tapley set out at once for The Blue Dragon to learn
the latest news.

The rosy landlady laughed and cried together to see them and Mark Tapley
kissed her so many times that she was quite out of breath. She cooked
the finest dinner in the world for them and told them all she knew about
their friends: how Tom Pinch had been sent away, and how every one said
that Pecksniff intended to marry