This put a thought into my
head. Acting on it I watched him in different manners and at different
times not necessary to enter into, till I found that this strange young
man was deaf and dumb.
The discovery turned me over, because I knew that a part of that
establishment where she had been was allotted to young men (some of them
well off), and I thought to myself, "If she favours him, where am I? and
where is all that I have worked and planned for?" Hoping--I must confess
to the selfishness--that she might _not_ favour him, I set myself to find
out. At last I was by accident present at a meeting between them in the
open air, looking on leaning behind a fir-tree without their knowing of
it. It was a moving meeting for all the three parties concerned. I knew
every syllable that passed between them as well as they did. I listened
with my eyes, which had come to be as quick and true with deaf and dumb
conversation as my ears with the talk of people that can speak. He was a-
going out to China as clerk in a merchant's house, which his father had
been before him. He was in circumstances to keep a wife, and he wanted
her to marry him and go along with him. She persisted, no. He asked if
she didn't love him. Yes, she loved him dearly, dearly; but she could
never disappoint her beloved, good, noble, generous, and I-don't-know-
what-all father (meaning me, the Cheap Jack in the sleeved waistcoat) and
she would stay with him, Heaven bless him! though it was to break her
heart.
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