Read the following excerpt from Hard Times by Charles Dickens, and answer the question
Stephen looked older, but he had had a hard life. It was said that every life has its roses and thoms, there
seemed, however, to have been a misadventure or mistake in Stephen's case, whereby somebody else had
become possessed of his roses, and he had become possessed of the same somebody else's thoms in
addition to his own. He had known to use his words, a peck of trouble. He was usually called Old Stephen in
a kind of rough homage to the fact
What is the tone of this passage?
satirical
pitiful
mitted
impatient