screwed into  the acutest angles, to  prevent its
philosophical composure from being disturbed by the rolling of the sea. Such
extraordinary precautions were  taken  in every instance  to save  room, and
keep  the  thing  compact; and  so much practical navigation was fitted, and
cushioned, and screwed into every box  (whether the box was a mere  slab, as
some  were,  or  something between a cocked hat  and a star-fish, as  others
were,  and  those quite mild and modest boxes as compared with others); that
the shop itself, partaking of the general infection, seemed almost to become
a snug, sea-going, ship-shape  concern, wanting only good  sea-room,  in the
event of an unexpected launch, to work its way securely to any desert island
in the world.
     Many minor incidents in the household life of the Ships'
     Instrument-maker who  was proud of his little Midshipman,  assisted and
bore out this fancy. His acquaintance lying chiefly among ship-chandlers and
so forth, he had always plenty of the veritable ships' biscuit on his table.
It was  familiar with dried meats  and tongues,  possessing an extraordinary
flavour  of  rope yarn. Pickles  were  produced upon it,  in great wholesale
jars, with 'dealer in all kinds of Ships' Provisions' on  the label; spirits
were set forth in  case bottles  with no throats. Old prints of  ships  with
alphabetical references to  their various mysteries, hung in frames upon the
walls; the Tartar Frigate under weigh, was on the plates; outlandish shells,
seaweeds, and  mosses, decorated  the  chimney-piece; the little wainscotted
back parlour was lighted by a sky-light, like a cabin.
     Here he lived too, in  skipper-like  state, all  alone with his  nephew
Walter:  a  boy of fourteen  who looked  quite enough like a  midshipman, to
carry out the prevailing idea. But there it ended, for Solomon Gills himself
(more generally called old Sol) was far from  having a maritime  appearance.
To say nothing of his Welsh wig, which was as plain and stubborn a Welsh wig
as ever was worn, and in which he looked like anything but a Rover, he was a
slow, quiet-spoken, thoughtful  old fellow, with eyes  as red as if they had
been small suns looking at you through  a fog; and  a newly-awakened manner,
such  as he might have  acquired  by having stared  for three  or  four days
successively through every optical instrument in his shop, and suddenly came
back to the world again, to find it green. The only change ever known in his
outward man,  was from a complete suit of coffee-colour cut very square, and
ornamented with glaring buttons, to the same suit of coffee-colour minus the
inexpressibles, which were then  of  a  pale nankeen. He wore a very precise
shirt-frill, and  carried a pair of first-rate  spectacles on his  forehead,
and a tremendous chronometer in his fob,  rather  than doubt which  precious
possession, he would have believed in a conspiracy against it on part of all
the clocks and watches in the City, and even of the very Sun itself. Such as
he  was,  such  he had  been  in  the  shop  and  parlour  behind the little
Midshipman, for years upon years; going regularly aloft  to bed every  night
in  a  howling  garret remote from the  lodgers,  where, when  gentlemen  of
England  who lived below at ease had little or no idea  of the state  of the
weather, it often blew great guns.
     It is half-past five o'clock, and an  autumn afternoon, when the reader
and Solomon Gills  become acquainted. Solomon  Gills is in the act of seeing
what time it is by the unimpeachable  chronometer. The usual daily clearance
has been making in the City for an hour or more; and the human tide is still
rolling westward. 'The streets have thinned,' as Mr Gills says, 'very much.'
It threatens to be wet to-night. All the  weatherglasses in the shop  are in
low spirits, and  the  rain already shines upon the cocked hat of the wooden
Midshipman.
     'Where's Walter, I wonder!' said Solomon Gills, after he had  carefully
put up the chronometer again. 'Here's dinner  been ready, half  an hour, and
no Walter!'
     Turning round upon  his  stool behind the counter, Mr Gills looked  out
among the instruments in the window, to see if his  nephew might be crossing
the  road. No. He was not among the bobbing umbrellas, and  he certainly was
not the  newspaper  boy in the oilskin cap  who was  slowly working his  way
along the piece of brass outside, writing his name over Mr Gills's name with
his forefinger.
     'If I didn't know he was too fond of me to make a run of it, and go and
enter himself aboard ship against my wishes, I should begin to be fidgetty,'
said Mr  Gills, tapping two or three weather-glasses  with  his knuckles. 'I
really should. All in the Downs, eh! Lots of moisture! Well! it's wanted.'
     I believe,'  said  Mr Gills, blowing the dust  off the  glass  top of a
compass-case, 'that you don't  point more direct and due to the back parlour
than  the boy's  inclination does after  all. And the parlour  couldn't bear
straighter either. Due north. Not the twentieth part of a point either way.'
     'Halloa, Uncle Sol!'
     'Halloa, my boy!' cried  the Instrument-maker, turning  briskly  round.
'What! you are here, are you?'
     A  cheerful looking,  merry boy, fresh with  running  home in the rain;
fair-faced, bright-eyed, and curly-haired.
     'Well, Uncle, how have  you got on without me all day? Is dinner ready?
I'm so hungry.'
     'As  to getting on,' said Solomon good-naturedly, 'it would be odd if I
couldn't get on without a young dog like  you  a great deal better than with
you. As to  dinner being ready, it's been  ready this  half hour and waiting
for you. As to being hungry, I am!'
     'Come along then, Uncle!' cried the boy. 'Hurrah for the admiral!'
     'Confound the admiral!' returned  Solomon Gills.  'You  mean  the  Lord
Mayor.'
     'No I don't!' cried the boy. 'Hurrah for  the  admiral!  Hurrah for the
admiral! For-ward!'
     At this  word  of command,  the  Welsh  wig and  its wearer  were borne
without resistance into the back parlour, as at the head of a boarding party
of five hundred men; and Uncle Sol and his nephew were speedily engaged on a
fried sole with a prospect of steak to follow.
     'The Lord Mayor, Wally,' said Solomon, 'for ever! No more admirals. The
Lord Mayor's your admiral.'
     'Oh,  is he though!'  said the boy, shaking his  head. 'Why, the  Sword
Bearer's better than him. He draws his sword sometimes.
     'And  a pretty  figure  he cuts  with it for his  pains,' returned  the
Uncle. 'Listen to me, Wally, listen to me. Look on the mantelshelf.'
     'Why who  has cocked my silver mug up there, on  a nail?' exclaimed the
boy.
     I have,' said his Uncle. 'No more mugs now.  We must begin to drink out
of glasses to-day, Walter. We are men of business. We belong to the City. We
started in life this morning.
     'Well,  Uncle,' said the boy, 'I'll  drink out of anything you like, so
long as I can drink to you. Here's to you, Uncle Sol, and Hurrah for the
     'Lord Mayor,' interrupted the old man.
     'For  the  Lord Mayor, Sheriffs, Common Council,  and Livery,' said the
boy. 'Long life to 'em!'
     The uncle  nodded his head with great satisfaction. 'And now,' he said,
'let's hear something about the Firm.'
     'Oh! there's not much to be told  about the Firm, Uncle,' said the boy,
plying his knife and fork.' It's a precious  dark set of offices, and in the
room where  I  sit, there's a high fender, and an iron safe, and  some cards
about  ships  that  are going to sail, and  an almanack, and some desks  and
stools,  and an  inkbottle,  and some  books, and some boxes, and a  lot  of
cobwebs, and in one of 'em, just over my head,  a  shrivelled-up blue-bottle
that looks as if it had hung there ever so long.'
     'Nothing else?' said the Uncle.
     'No, nothing  else, except an old birdcage (I wonder how that ever came
there!) and a coal-scuttle.'
     'No bankers' books, or cheque books, or bills, or such tokens of wealth
rolling in from  day to day?' said old Sol, looking wistfully at his  nephew
out of the fog that  always seemed to hang about him, and laying an unctuous
emphasis upon the words.
     'Oh yes, plenty  of that I suppose,'  returned  his  nephew carelessly;
'but all that sort of thing's in  Mr Carker's  room, or Mr Morfin's,  or  MR
Dombey's.'
     'Has Mr Dombey been there to-day?' inquired the Uncle.
     'Oh yes! In and out all day.'
     'He didn't take any notice of you, I suppose?'.
     'Yes he did. He walked  up to my seat, - I wish he wasn't so solemn and
stiff,  Uncle, -  and  said,  "Oh! you are  the son  of Mr Gills  the Ships'
Instrument-maker." "Nephew, Sir," I said. "I said nephew, boy," said he. But
I could take my oath he said son, Uncle.'
     'You're mistaken I daresay. It's no matter.
     'No, it's  no matter,  but he  needn't have been so  sharp, I  thought.
There was no harm in it  though he did say son. Then he told me that you had
spoken to him about  me, and that he had  found me  employment in the  House
accordingly, and that I was expected to be  attentive and punctual, and then
he went away. I thought he didn't seem to like me much.'
     'You  mean, I suppose,' observed the Instrument-maker, 'that you didn't
seem to like him much?'
     'Well, Uncle,' returned the boy, laughing. 'Perhaps so; I never thought
of that.'
     Solomon looked a little graver as  he finished his  dinner, and glanced
from  time to  time at the boy's bright face. When dinner was done, and  the
cloth  was  cleared   away  (the  entertainment  had  been  brought  from  a
neighbouring eating-house), he lighted a candle, and went  down below into a
little cellar, while his nephew, standing on the mouldy staircase, dutifully
held  the  light.  After  a  moment's  groping here and  there, he presently
returned with a very ancient-looking bottle, covered with dust and dirt.
     'Why, Uncle  Sol!'  said  the  boy, 'what are  you  about?  that's  the
wonderful Madeira! - there's only one more bottle!'
     Uncle Sol nodded his head, implying that he knew very well what he  was
about; and having drawn the cork in solemn  silence, filled two  glasses and
set the bottle and a third clean glass on the table.
     'You  shall drink the other  bottle, Wally,' he said, 'when you come to
good fortune; when you are a thriving, respected, happy man; when  the start
in  life  you have made to-day shall have brought  you, as I pray  Heaven it
may! - to a  smooth part of the course you have to run, my child. My love to
you!'
     Some of the fog  that hung about  old  Sol seemed to have got into  his
throat; for he spoke huskily. His  hand shook too, as he clinked  his  glass
against his nephew's. But having once got the wine to his lips, he tossed it
off like a man, and smacked them afterwards.
     'Dear  Uncle,' said the boy,  affecting to make light of  it, while the
tears  stood in his eyes, 'for the honour  you have done me,  et  cetera, et
cetera. I shall now  beg to propose Mr Solomon Gills with  three times three
and  one cheer more. Hurrah! and  you'll return thanks, Uncle, when we drink
the last bottle together; won't you?'
     They  clinked  their glasses  again; and Walter, who was  hoarding  his
wine, took a sip of it, and held the glass up to his eye with as critical an
air as he could possibly assume.
     His Uncle  sat looking at him for some time in silence. When their eyes
at  last met,  he  began at once to pursue  the theme  that had occupied his
thoughts, aloud, as if he had been speaking all the time.
     'You see,  Walter,' he said, 'in truth this  business is merely a habit
with me. I  am so accustomed  to the habit  that  I  could hardly live if  I
relinquished it: but there's nothing doing, nothing doing. When that uniform
was  worn,'  pointing  out  towards  the  little  Midshipman, 'then  indeed,
fortunes were to be made, and were made. But competition,  competition - new
invention,  new  invention - alteration,  alteration - the world's gone past
me. I hardly know where I am myself, much less where my customers are.
     'Never mind 'em, Uncle!'
     'Since  you  came  home  from  weekly  boarding-school at  Peckham, for
instance - and that's ten days,' said Solomon, 'I  don't remember more  than
one person that has come into the shop.'
     'Two, Uncle, don't you recollect? There was the man who came to ask for
change for a sovereign - '
     'That's the one,' said Solomon.
     'Why  Uncle! don't you call the woman anybody, who came to  ask the way
to Mile-End Turnpike?'
     'Oh! it's true,' said Solomon, 'I forgot her. Two persons.'
     'To be sure, they didn't buy anything,' cried the boy.
     'No. They didn't buy anything,' said Solomon, quietly.
     'Nor want anything,' cried the boy.
     'No.  If they  had, they'd gone to another  shop,' said Solomon, in the
same tone.
     'But there were two  of 'em, Uncle,' cried the boy,  as if that were  a
great triumph. 'You said only one.'
     'Well, Wally,'  resumed the  old man,  after  a short pause: 'not being
like the Savages who came on Robinson Crusoe's Island,  we  can't live  on a
man who asks for change for a sovereign, and a woman who inquires the way to
Mile-End Turnpike. As I said just now, the world has gone  past me.  I don't
blame it; but I no longer understand it. Tradesmen are not the same  as they
used to be, apprentices are not the same, business is not the same, business
commodities are not the same. Seven-eighths of my stock is  old-fashioned. I
am  an old-fashioned  man in an old-fashioned shop, in a  street that is not
the same as I remember it. I have fallen behind the time, and  am too old to
catch it again. Even the noise it makes a long way ahead, confuses me.'
     Walter was going to speak, but his Uncle held up his hand.
     'Therefore, Wally -  therefore  it is that I  am anxious you should  be
early in the busy world,  and on the world's track.  I am only the ghost  of
this  business -  its substance vanished long ago; and when I die, its ghost
will be  laid. As it  is clearly no inheritance for you then, I have thought
it  best to  use for your  advantage,  almost the only  fragment of the  old
connexion that  stands by me, through  long habit. Some people suppose me to
be wealthy. I  wish for  your sake they  were  right.  But whatever  I leave
behind me, or whatever I can give you, you in  such a  House as Dombey's are
in  the road to use well  and make the most of. Be diligent, try to like it,
my dear boy, work for a steady independence, and be happy!'
     'I'll do everything I can, Uncle, to  deserve your affection. Indeed  I
will,' said the boy, earnestly
     'I know it,' said Solomon. 'I am sure of it,' and he applied himself to
a second glass  of the old Madeira,  with increased relish. 'As to the Sea,'
he pursued, 'that's  well enough in fiction, Wally, but it won't do in fact:
it  won't  do at  all.  It's natural enough that you  should think about it,
associating it with  all these familiar things; but  it  won't do, it  won't
do.'
     Solomon Gills rubbed his hands with an air of stealthy enjoyment, as he
talked  of the sea, though; and looked  on the  seafaring objects  about him
with inexpressible complacency.
     'Think of this wine for instance,' said old Sol, 'which has been to the
East Indies and back, I'm not able to say how often, and has been once round
the world.  Think of the  pitch-dark nights, the roaring winds, and  rolling
seas:'
     'The thunder, lightning, rain, hail, storm of all kinds,' said the boy.
     'To be sure,' said Solomon, - 'that this wine has passed through. Think
what  a straining and  creaking of  timbers and  masts: what a whistling and
howling of the gale through ropes and rigging:'
     'What a clambering  aloft  of men, vying with each other who shall  lie
out first upon the yards to  furl the  icy sails, while the  ship  rolls and
pitches, like mad!' cried his nephew.
     'Exactly so,'  said Solomon: 'has gone on, over the old cask  that held
this wine. Why, when the Charming Sally went down in the - '
     'In the Baltic Sea, in the dead of night; five-and-twenty  minutes past
twelve when the captain's watch stopped in his pocket; he lying dead against
the main-mast - on the fourteenth of February, seventeen forty-nine!'  cried
Walter, with great animation.
     'Ay, to be sure!' cried  old Sol, 'quite right!  Then, there  were five
hundred casks of such  wine  aboard; and  all hands (except  the first mate,
first lieutenant,  two seamen, and a lady, in a leaky boat) going to work to
stave  the casks, got  drunk and died drunk, singing "Rule  Britannia", when
she settled and went down, and ending with one awful scream in chorus.'
     'But  when the George the Second drove ashore,  Uncle, on the  coast of
Cornwall, in a dismal  gale, two  hours  before daybreak,  on the  fourth of
March, 'seventy-one,  she had near two hundred horses aboard; and the horses
breaking loose down  below,  early in the  gale, and tearing to and fro, and
trampling  each  other  to  death, made such noises, and  set up such  human
cries, that the crew believing  the ship to  be full of devils,  some of the
best  men,  losing heart  and head, went overboard in despair,  and only two
were left alive, at last, to tell the tale.'
     'And when,' said old Sol, 'when the Polyphemus - '
     'Private  West  India  Trader,  burden  three  hundred  and fifty tons,
Captain, John Brown of Deptford. Owners, Wiggs and Co.,' cried Walter.
     'The  same,' said Sol; 'when she took fire, four days' sail with a fair
wind out of Jamaica Harbour, in the night - '
     'There were  two brothers  on board,'  interposed his  nephew, speaking
very fast and loud, 'and there not being room  for  both of them in the only
boat that wasn't swamped,  neither of  them would consent  to  go, until the
elder took the younger by the waist, and flung him in. And then the younger,
rising in the boat, cried out, "Dear Edward, think of  your promised wife at
home. I'm only a boy. No one waits at home for me. Leap down into my place!"
and flung himself in the sea!'
     The kindling eye and heightened colour of  the boy, who had risen  from
his seat in the earnestness of what he  said and felt,  seemed to remind old
Sol of something he had forgotten, or that his encircling mist  had hitherto
shut out. Instead of proceeding with any more anecdotes, as he had evidently
intended  but a moment before, he gave a short dry  cough, and  said, 'Well!
suppose we change the subject.'
     The  truth was, that the simple-minded Uncle  in his secret  attraction
towards the marvellous and  adventurous - of which  he was, in  some sort, a
distant relation, by his trade - had greatly encouraged the same  attraction
in the nephew; and that everything that had ever been put  before the boy to
deter him  from a life of adventure, had had the usual unaccountable  effect
of  sharpening his taste  for  it. This is invariable.  It would  seem as if
there never was a book written, or  a story told, expressly  with the object
of keeping boys on shore, which did not lure and charm them to the ocean, as
a matter of course.
     But an addition  to the little  party  now made its  appearance, in the
shape of a gentleman in a  wide suit  of blue, with a hook instead of a hand
attached to his right wrist; very bushy black eyebrows; and a thick stick in
his left hand, covered all over (like his nose) with knobs.  He wore a loose
black silk handkerchief round his neck, and such a very  large  coarse shirt
collar,  that it looked like a small sail. He  was  evidently the person for
whom the spare wine-glass  was intended,  and evidently knew it;  for having
taken off  his rough outer coat, and hung up, on a particular peg behind the
door, such a  hard glazed hat as  a sympathetic person's head might ache  at
the sight of, and which left a  red rim round his own forehead  as if he had
been wearing a tight basin, he brought a chair to where the clean glass was,
and sat  himself down behind it. He was  usually  addressed as Captain, this
visitor; and had been  a pilot, or  a skipper,  or  a  privateersman, or all
three perhaps; and was a very salt-looking man indeed.
     His face, remarkable for a brown solidity, brightened as he shook hands
with Uncle and  nephew; but he  seemed to be of  a laconic  disposition, and
merely said:
     'How goes it?'
     'All well,' said Mr Gills, pushing the bottle towards him.
     He  took  it  up,  and  having  surveyed   and   smelt  it,  said  with
extraordinary expression:
     'The?'
     'The,' returned the Instrument-maker.
     Upon that he whistled as  he filled his glass, and seemed to think they
were making holiday indeed.
     'Wal'r!' he said,  arranging his hair (which was thin)  with his  hook,
and  then  pointing it at the Instrument-maker, 'Look at him!  Love! Honour!
And Obey! Overhaul your catechism till you find that passage, and when found
turn the leaf down. Success, my boy!'
     He was so perfectly satisfied both with his quotation and his reference
to it, that he  could not help repeating the words again in a low voice, and
saying he had forgotten 'em these forty year.
     'But  I never wanted two or  three words  in my life that I didn't know
where to lay my hand upon 'em, Gills,' he observed. 'It comes of not wasting
language as some do.'
     The reflection  perhaps reminded  him that  he  had better, like  young
Norval's  father, '"ncrease  his store." At any rate  he became  silent, and
remained so,  until old Sol  went  out into the shop to light it up, when he
turned to Walter, and said, without any introductory remark:
     'I suppose he could make a clock if he tried?'
     'I shouldn't wonder, Captain Cuttle,' returned the boy.
     'And  it would go!' said Captain Cuttle, making a species of serpent in
the air with his hook. 'Lord, how that clock would go!'
     For a moment or two  he seemed quite lost in contemplating the pace  of
this ideal timepiece,  and sat looking at  the  boy as if his  face were the
dial.
     'But he's  chockful of science,' he observed, waving  his  hook towards
the stock-in-trade. 'Look'ye here! Here's a  collection of 'em.  Earth, air,
or  water.  It's  all one. Only say where you'll have it. Up  in a  balloon?
There you are.  Down in a bell? There  you are.  D'ye want  to put the North
Star in a pair of scales and weigh it? He'll do it for you.'
     It may be gathered from these  remarks that Captain Cuttle's  reverence
for  the  stock of  instruments was profound, and  that  his philosophy knew
little or no distinction between trading in it and inventing it.
     'Ah!' he said, with a sigh, 'it's a  fine thing  to understand 'em. And
yet it's a fine thing  not to understand 'em. I hardly know which  is  best.
It's  so comfortable  to  sit  here and  feel  that  you might  be  weighed,
measured, magnified, electrified, polarized, played the very devil with: and
never know how.'
     Nothing short  of  the wonderful  Madeira, combined with  the  occasion
(which  rendered  it desirable  to improve and expand  Walter's mind), could
have ever loosened  his tongue to  the  extent of giving  utterance  to this
prodigious oration. He seemed quite amazed himself at the manner in which it
opened up to view the sources of the taciturn delight he  had  had in eating
Sunday dinners in that parlour for ten years. Becoming a sadder and  a wiser
man, he mused and held his peace.
     'Come!' cried  the  subject of this admiration,  returning. 'Before you
have your glass of grog, Ned, we must finish the bottle.'
     'Stand by!' said Ned, filling his glass. 'Give the boy some more.'
     'No more, thank'e, Uncle!'
     'Yes, yes,' said  Sol, 'a little  more. We'll finish the bottle, to the
House, Ned -  Walter's House. Why it may  be his House one of these days, in
part. Who knows? Sir Richard Whittington married his master's daughter.'
     '"Turn again  Whittington, Lord  Mayor of London, and when you are  old
you  will never depart from it,"' interposed the  Captain.  'Wal'r! Overhaul
the book, my lad.'
     'And although Mr Dombey hasn't a daughter,' Sol began.
     'Yes, yes, he has, Uncle,' said the boy, reddening and laughing.
     'Has he?' cried the old man. 'Indeed I think he has too.
     'Oh!  I know he has,' said the boy. 'Some  of 'em were talking about it
in  the office today. And they do say,  Uncle and Captain Cuttle,'  lowering
his  voice, 'that  he's  taken  a  dislike  to  her, and  that  she's  left,
unnoticed, among the servants, and that his mind's so set all the while upon
having his son in the House, that although he's only a baby now, he is going
to  have balances struck  oftener than  formerly, and the  books kept closer
than  they  used to  be, and has even been seen (when he  thought he wasn't)
walking in the Docks, looking at his ships  and property and all that, as if
he was exulting like, over what he and his son will possess together. That's
what they say. Of course, I don't know.
     'He knows all about her already, you see,' said the instrument-maker.
     'Nonsense,  Uncle,'  cried  the  boy,  still  reddening  and  laughing,
boy-like. 'How can I help hearing what they tell me?'
     'The  Son's a little in our way at present, I'm  afraid, Ned,' said the
old man, humouring the joke.
     'Very much,' said the Captain.
     'Nevertheless, we'll drink him,' pursued Sol. 'So, here's to Dombey and
Son.'
     'Oh,  very well,  Uncle,'  said  the  boy,  merrily.  'Since  you  have
introduced the mention of her,  and have connected me with her and have said
that  I know all about her, I shall make bold to amend the  toast. So here's
to Dombey - and Son - and Daughter!'

        CHAPTER 5.
     Paul's Progress and Christening

     Little Paul, suffering no contamination from the blood  of the Toodles,
grew stouter  and stronger every day. Every day, too, he was  more and  more
ardently cherished by Miss Tox, whose devotion  was so far appreciated by Mr
Dombey that he began  to regard her as a  woman of great natural good sense,
whose feelings did her  credit and  deserved encouragement. He was so lavish
of  this condescension, that  he not  only  bowed to  her, in  a  particular
manner, on several occasions, but even entrusted such  stately  recognitions
of  her to  his  sister as 'pray tell your friend, Louisa, that  she is very
good,'  or  'mention  to   Miss   Tox,   Louisa,   that  I   am  obliged  to
her;'specialities   which   made  a  deep  impression  on   the  lady   thus
distinguished.
     Whether Miss Tox conceived  that  having been selected by the Fates  to
welcome the  little Dombey before he was born,  in Kirby, Beard  and Kirby's
Best Mixed Pins, it therefore  naturally devolved upon her to greet him with
all other forms of welcome in all other early  stages of his existence -  or
whether her overflowing goodness induced her to volunteer into the  domestic
militia as a substitute in some sort for his  deceased Mama - or whether she
was  conscious of  any other motives -  are questions which in this stage of
the  Firm's  history  herself only  could  have  solved.  Nor have they much
bearing on the fact (of  which there is no doubt), that Miss Tox's constancy
and zeal were  a heavy discouragement to  Richards, who  lost  flesh  hourly
under her patronage, and was in some danger of being superintended to death.
     Miss Tox  was  often in  the habit of assuring Mrs Chick,  that nothing
could exceed  her  interest in  all connected with the development  of  that
sweet child;' and an observer of  Miss Tox's proceedings might have inferred
so  much  without  declaratory  confirmation.  She  would preside  over  the
innocent repasts of the young heir, with ineffable satisfaction, almost with
an  air of  joint proprietorship with  Richards in the entertainment. At the
little ceremonies of the  bath  and  toilette, she assisted with enthusiasm.
The  administration of  infantine  doses  of  physic awakened all the active
sympathy of her character; and  being on one occasion secreted in a cupboard
(whither she had fled in  modesty), when  Mr Dombey was introduced  into the
nursery by his sister,  to behold his son, in the course  of preparation for
bed,  taking a  short walk uphill over Richards's gown, in a  short and airy
linen jacket, Miss Tox was so transported beyond the  ignorant present as to
be unable to  refrain from crying out, 'Is he not beautiful Mr Dombey! Is he
not a Cupid, Sir!'  and then  almost  sinking  behind the  closet door  with
confusion and blushes.
     'Louisa,' said Mr  Dombey, one day,  to his sister, 'I  really think  I
must  present your friend with  some little token, on the occasion of Paul's
christening. She  has  exerted herself so warmly in the child's behalf  from
the first, and seems to  understand her position so  thoroughly (a very rare
merit in this  world, I am sorry to say), that it would really be  agreeable
to me to notice her.'
     Let it be no detraction from the merits of Miss Tox, to hint that in Mr
Dombey's  eyes, as in some others that occasionally see the light, they only
achieved that  mighty  piece of knowledge, the  understanding  of their  own
position, who showed  a fitting reverence for his. It was not so  much their
merit that they knew themselves, as that they knew him, and bowed low before
him.
     'My dear Paul,' returned his sister, 'you do Miss Tox but justice, as a
man of your penetration  was sure,  I knew, to  do.  I believe if there  are
three words in the English  language for  which she has  a respect amounting
almost to veneration, those words are, Dombey and Son.'
     'Well,' said Mr Dombey, 'I believe it. It does Miss Tox credit.'
     'And as to anything in the shape of a token, my dear Paul,' pursued his
sister, 'all I can say is that anything you give  Miss Tox  will be  hoarded
and prized, I am sure,  like a relic. But there  is a way, my  dear Paul, of
showing your sense of Miss Tox's friendliness in a still more flattering and
acceptable manner, if you should be so inclined.'
     'How is that?' asked Mr Dombey.
     'Godfathers, of course,' continued  Mrs Chick, 'are important in  point
of connexion and influence.'
     'I don't know why they should be, to my son, said Mr Dombey, coldly.
     'Very true, my  dear Paul,' retorted  Mrs Chick,  with an extraordinary
show of animation, to  cover the suddenness  of her  conversion; 'and spoken
like yourself.  I might  have expected  nothing else from you. I might  have
known  that such  would have  been your  opinion.  Perhaps;' here Mrs  Chick
faltered again, as not quite comfortably feeling her way; 'perhaps that is a
reason  why  you might have the less objection  to  allowing  Miss Tox to be
godmother to the dear thing, if it were only as deputy and proxy for someone
else. That it would be received  as a  great honour and distinction, Paul, I
need not say.
     'Louisa,'  said  Mr Dombey,  after  a  short pause, 'it  is not  to  be
supposed - '
     'Certainly not,' cried Mrs Chick, hastening to anticipate a refusal, 'I
never thought it was.'
     Mr Dombey looked at her impatiently.
     'Don't flurry me, my  dear  Paul,' said his sister; 'for that  destroys
me.  I am  far  from strong. I  have not been quite myself, since poor  dear
Fanny departed.'
     Mr  Dombey  glanced at the pocket-handkerchief which his sister applied
to her eyes, and resumed:
     'It is not  be supposed, I say 'And I say,' murmured Mrs Chick, 'that I
never thought it was.'
     'Good Heaven, Louisa!' said Mr Dombey.
     'No,  my dear  Paul,'  she  remonstrated with tearful  dignity, 'I must
really  be allowed  to speak. I am not  so clever,  or  so  reasoning, or so
eloquent, or  so  anything, as you are. I know  that very well. So much  the
worse for me. But if they  were  the last  words I had to  utter  - and last
words should be very solemn to you and  me, Paul, after poor dear  Fanny - I
would still  say I never thought it was. And  what is more,' added Mrs Chick
with  increased dignity, as if she had withheld her crushing argument  until
now, 'I  never did think  it was.' Mr Dombey walked to the  window  and back
again.
     'It is not to be supposed, Louisa,'  he said  (Mrs Chick had nailed her
colours to the mast, and  repeated 'I know it isn't,'  but he took no notice
of  it),  'but that there  are many persons who, supposing that I recognised
any claim  at  all  in such a case, have  a  claim upon me superior  to Miss
Tox's.  But  I do  not. I recognise  no  such thing. Paul and myself will be
able, when the time comes, to hold our own - the House, in other words, will
be able to  hold  its own, and  maintain  its own,  and hand down its own of
itself, and without  any  such common-place aids. The  kind of  foreign help
which people usually seek for their children, I can afford to despise; being
above it, I hope. So that Paul's infancy and childhood pass away well, and I
see him becoming qualified without waste of time for the career  on which he
is destined to enter, I  am satisfied. He will make what powerful friends he
pleases  in after-life, when  he is actively maintaining - and extending, if
that  is possible -  the  dignity and  credit  of the Firm. Until then, I am
enough for him, perhaps, and  all in all. I have  no wish that people should
step  in  between  us. I  would  much  rather show my  sense of the obliging
conduct of a deserving person like your friend. Therefore let  it be so; and
your husband  and  myself  will do  well  enough for the other  sponsors,  I
daresay.'
     In  the  course  of  these  remarks, delivered with  great  majesty and
grandeur, Mr Dombey had truly revealed the secret feelings of his breast. An
indescribable distrust of anybody stepping in between himself and his son; a
haughty dread of  having  any  rival  or  partner  in  the boy's respect and
deference; a sharp misgiving, recently  acquired, that he was not infallible
in his power of  bending and binding human wills; as sharp a jealousy of any
second check or cross; these were, at that time the master keys of his soul.
In all his life, he had never made a friend. His cold and distant nature had
neither sought one, nor  found one.  And now, when that nature  concentrated
its whole force so strongly on a  partial  scheme  of  parental interest and
ambition, it seemed as if its icy current, instead of being released by this
influence, and running  clear  and free,  had  thawed for but an instant  to
admit its burden, and then frozen with it into one unyielding block.
     Elevated  thus to  the  godmothership of little Paul,  in virtue of her
insignificance, Miss Tox was from that hour chosen  and appointed to office;
and Mr Dombey further signified his pleasure that the ceremony, already long
delayed, should take place without further postponement. His sister, who had
been far from  anticipating  so  signal a  success, withdrew as  soon as she
could,  to communicate  it  to her best of friends;  and Mr Dombey was  left
alone in his  library.  He had  already laid his  hand upon  the bellrope to
convey his usual summons to Richards, when his eye fell upon a writing-desk,
belonging  to his deceased wife,  which had been taken,  among other things,
from  a cabinet in her  chamber. It was  not the first time that his eye had
lighted  on  it He carried the  key in his pocket; and he brought it to  his
table  and opened it  now - having previously  locked the room door - with a
well-accustomed hand.
     From beneath a leaf of torn and  cancelled scraps of paper, he took one
letter that remained entire. Involuntarily holding his  breath  as he opened
this document, and 'bating in the stealthy action something  of his arrogant
demeanour,  he s at down, resting his  head  upon  one  hand,  and  read  it
through.
     He read it  slowly  and  attentively, and with a nice  particularity to
every syllable. Otherwise than as his great  deliberation seemed  unnatural,
and  perhaps  the result of an  effort equally  great, he allowed no sign of
emotion to escape  him. When he had read it through, he folded  and refolded
it slowly several  times, and tore it carefully into fragments. Checking his
hand  in the act of throwing these away, he put  them  in his pocket, as  if
unwilling to  trust  them  even  to  the  chances  of  being  re-united  and
deciphered;  and  instead of  ringing,  as  usual, for  little Paul,  he sat
solitary, all the evening, in his cheerless room.
     There was  anything but solitude in  the  nursery; for there, Mrs Chick
and Miss  Tox were enjoying a social evening, so much to the disgust of Miss
Susan Nipper, that that young lady embraced every  opportunity of making wry
faces  behind the door.  Her feelings were so much excited  on the occasion,
that  she found it  indispensable to afford them this relief,  even  without
having  the   comfort  of  any  audience  or  sympathy   whatever.   As  the
knight-errants of old relieved their minds by carving their mistress's names
in deserts, and wildernesses,  and  other savage places  where there was  no
probability  of  there ever  being anybody to  read them, so did Miss  Susan
Nipper curl her snub nose  into drawers and  wardrobes,  put away  winks  of
disparagement in cupboards, shed derisive squints  into stone  pitchers, and
contradict and call names out in the passage.
     The  two  interlopers, however,  blissfully  unconscious  of the  young
lady's  sentiments,  saw  little  Paul  safe  through   all  the  stages  of
undressing, airy  exercise, supper and bed; and  then sat down to tea before
the fire. The two children now  lay, through the  good  offices of Polly, in
one  room;  and  it  was  not  until  the ladies were  established  at their
tea-table that, happening to look towards  the  little beds, they thought of
Florence.
     'How sound she sleeps!' said Miss Tox.
     'Why, you know,  my dear,  she  takes  a great deal of  exercise in the
course of the day,' returned Mrs Chick, 'playing about little Paul so much.'
     'She is a curious child,' said Miss Tox.
     'My dear,' retorted Mrs Chick, in a low voice: 'Her Mama, all over!'
     'In deed!' said Miss Tox. 'Ah dear me!'
     A tone of most extraordinary compassion Miss Tox said it in, though she
had no distinct idea why, except that it was expected of her.
     'Florence will never, never, never be a Dombey,'said Mrs Chick, 'not if
she lives to be a thousand years old.'
     Miss Tox elevated her eyebrows, and was again full of
     commiseration.
     'I  quite fret and worry myself about her,' said Mrs Chick, with a sigh
of modest merit. 'I really don't see what is to become of her when she grows
older,  or what position she  is to  take. She don't gain on her Papa in the
least. How can one expect she should, when she is so very unlike a Dombey?'
     Miss Tox looked as if she saw  no way out  of such a cogent argument as
that, at all.
     'And the child, you see,' said Mrs Chick, in deep confidence, 'has poor
dear Fanny's nature. She'll never make an effort in after-life, I'll venture
to say. Never!  She'll never  wind and twine herself about her  Papa's heart
like - '
     'Like the ivy?' suggested Miss Tox.
     'Like the  ivy,' Mrs  Chick assented.  'Never! She'll  never glide  and
nestle into the bosom of her Papa's affections like - the - '
     'Startled fawn?' suggested Miss Tox.
     'Like the startled fawn,' said Mrs Chick. 'Never! Poor Fanny! Yet,  how
I loved her!'
     'You must not distress yourself, my dear,' said Miss Tox, in a soothing
voice. 'Now really! You have too much feeling.'
     'We have all our faults,' said Mrs Chick, weeping and shaking her head.
'I  daresay we have. I never was blind to hers. I never said I was. Far from
it. Yet how I loved her!'
     What a satisfaction it was to Mrs Chick - a common-place piece of folly
enough,  compared with  whom  her  sister-in-law  had been  a very angel  of
womanly intelligence  and gentleness - to patronise and  be  tender  to  the
memory  of  that  lady: in  exact  pursuance of her  conduct to  her in  her
lifetime: and to thoroughly believe herself,  and take herself  in, and make
herself  uncommonly  comfortable on  the strength of  her toleration! What a
mighty pleasant virtue toleration should be when we are right, to be so very
pleasant when we  are wrong, and quite unable to demonstrate how we come  to
be invested with the privilege of exercising it!
     Mrs  Chick was yet drying her eyes and  shaking her head, when Richards
made  bold  to caution her that Miss  Florence  was awake and sitting in her
bed. She  had risen, as the nurse said, and the lashes  of her eyes were wet
with  tears. But no  one  saw them  glistening save Polly. No one else leant
over  her,  and  whispered soothing words to her, or was near enough to hear
the flutter of her beating heart.
     'Oh!  dear nurse!' said the child,  looking  earnestly up  in her face,
'let me lie by my brother!'
     'Why, my pet?' said Richards.
     'Oh! I  think he loves me,' cried the child wildly. 'Let me lie by him.
Pray do!'
     Mrs Chick interposed with some motherly words about going to sleep like
a  dear, but Florence repeated her supplication, with a frightened look, and
in a voice broken by sobs and tears.
     'I'll not wake  him,' she said, covering  her face and hanging down her
head. 'I'll only touch him with  my  hand, and go to sleep. Oh, pray,  pray,
let me lie by my brother to-night, for I believe he's fond of me!'
     Richards took her without a word, and carrying her to the little bed in
which the infant was sleeping, laid her  down by his side. She crept as near
him as she could without disturbing his rest;  and stretching out one arm so
that  it  timidly embraced his neck, and hiding her face on the  other, over
which her damp and scattered hair fell loose, lay motionless.
     'Poor little thing,' said Miss Tox; 'she has been dreaming, I daresay.'
     Dreaming, perhaps, of loving tones for ever silent,  of loving eyes for
ever closed, of loving  arms  again wound round  her, and  relaxing  in that
dream  within  the  dam which  no tongue  can relate. Seeking, perhaps -  in
dreams - some natural comfort for a heart, deeply and sorely wounded, though
so young  a child's: and finding it, perhaps,  in dreams, if not  in waking,
cold,  substantial  truth.  This  trivial  incident  had so interrupted  the
current of  conversation, that it was difficult of resumption; and Mrs Chick
moreover  had been so affected  by  the  contemplation of her  own  tolerant
nature, that she was not in  spirits. The two  friends accordingly soon made
an  end of  their tea,  and  a servant  was despatched  to  fetch a  hackney
cabriolet for Miss  Tox. Miss Tox had great experience in  hackney cabs, and
her  starting in one was generally a work of time,  as she was systematic in
the preparatory arrangements.
     'Have the goodness, if you please, Towlinson,' said Miss Tox, 'first of
all, to carry out a pen and ink and take his number legibly.'
     'Yes, Miss,' said Towlinson.
     'Then, if you please, Towlinson,'said Miss Tox, 'have the goodness
     to  turn  the cushion.  Which,' said  Miss Tox apart to Mrs Chick,  'is
generally damp, my dear.'
     'Yes, Miss,' said Towlinson.
     'I'll trouble you also, if you please, Towlinson,' said Miss Tox, 'with
this card and this shilling. He's to drive to the card, and is to understand
that he will not on any account have more than the shilling.'
     'No, Miss,' said Towlinson.
     'And - I'm sorry to  give you  so  much trouble, Towlinson,' said  Miss
Tox, looking at him pensively.
     'Not at all, Miss,' said Towlinson.
     'Mention to  the man, then, if  you  please, Towlinson,' said Miss Tox,
'that the lady's uncle is a magistrate, and that if he  gives her any of his
impertinence  he will be punished terribly. You  can pretend to say that, if
you please, Towlinson, in a  friendly way, and because you  know it was done
to another man, who died.'
     'Certainly, Miss,' said Towlinson.
     'And now good-night to  my sweet, sweet, sweet, godson,' said Miss Tox,
with  a soft  shower of kisses  at each  repetition  of the  adjective; 'and
Louisa, my dear friend,  promise  me to take a little something  warm before
you go to bed, and not to distress yourself!'
     It was with extreme difficulty that Nipper,  the black-eyed, who looked
on steadfastly, contained herself  at this crisis, and  until the subsequent
departure  of Mrs Chick. But the  nursery being at length free of  visitors,
she made herself some recompense for her late restraint.
     'You might keep me  in a strait-waistcoat for  six weeks,' said Nipper,
'and when  I got it off I'd only be more aggravated, who ever heard the like
of them two Griffins, Mrs Richards?'
     'And then to talk of having been dreaming, poor dear!' said Polly.
     'Oh you beauties!' cried  Susan Nipper, affecting to salute the door by
which the  ladies had  departed.  'Never be  a Dombey won't she? It's  to be
hoped she won't, we don't want any more such, one's enough.'
     'Don't wake the children, Susan dear,' said Polly.
     'I'm very much beholden to you, Mrs Richards,' said Susan, who was  not
by any means discriminating in her wrath, 'and really feel it as a honour to
receive your commands, being a black slave and a mulotter. Mrs  Richards, if
there's any other orders, you can give me, pray mention 'em.'
     'Nonsense; orders,' said Polly.
     'Oh! bless your heart, Mrs  Richards,' cried Susan, 'temporaries always
orders permanencies here, didn't you know that, why  wherever was you  born,
Mrs Richards? But wherever  you was  born, Mrs Richards,' pursued  Spitfire,
shaking her head resolutely, 'and whenever, and however (which is best known
to  yourself),  you may bear  in mind, please, that it's  one thing  to give
orders, and  quite another thing to take 'em. A person may tell a  person to
dive off  a  bridge head  foremost into five-and-forty  feet  of water,  Mrs
Richards, but a person may be very far from diving.'
     'There  now,'  said Polly, 'you're angry  because you're a good  little
thing, and  fond  of Miss Florence;  and  yet you turn round on me,  because
there's nobody else.'
     'It's very easy for some to keep their tempers, and be soft-spoken, Mrs
Richards,' returned Susan, slightly  mollified, 'when  their child's made as
much of as a prince, and  is petted and  patted  till it wishes its  friends
further, but when a sweet young pretty innocent, that never  ought to have a
cross word spoken  to or  of it, is  rundown,  the case  is  very  different
indeed.  My goodness gracious me, Miss Floy, you  naughty, sinful child,  if
you don't  shut  your  eyes this minute, I'll call in them  hobgoblins  that
lives in the cock-loft to come and eat you up alive!'
     Here  Miss  Nipper made a  horrible  lowing, supposed to  issue from  a
conscientious goblin of  the bull species, impatient to discharge the severe
duty of his position.  Having further composed  her young charge by covering
her head with  the  bedclothes, and making three or four  angry dabs at  the
pillow, she  folded her arms, and  screwed up her mouth, and sat looking  at
the fire for the rest of the evening.
     Though little Paul was said,  in nursery phrase,  'to take  a  deal  of
notice  for his  age,'  he  took as  little notice  of all this  as  of  the
preparations for his christening on the next day but one; which nevertheless
went on about  him, as to his  personal  apparel, and that of his sister and
the two nurses, with great activity. Neither  did he, on the arrival  of the
appointed morning, show any sense of its importance; being, on the contrary,
unusually  inclined to sleep,  and unusually inclined to  take it ill in his
attendants that they dressed him to go out.
     It  happened to be an iron-grey autumnal day,  with a shrewd east  wind
blowing  - a day in keeping  with the proceedings. Mr Dombey represented  in
himself the wind,  the shade, and the autumn of the christening. He stood in
his library to receive the  company,  as  hard and cold  as the weather; and
when he  looked  out  through the glass room,  at the  trees  in the  little
garden,  their brown  and  yellow  leaves  came fluttering  down,  as if  he
blighted them.
     Ugh! They were  black, cold rooms; and seemed to  be in mourning,  like
the inmates of the house. The  books precisely matched as to size, and drawn
up in line, like soldiers, looked in their cold, hard, slippery uniforms, as
if they had  but one idea among them, and that was a  freezer. The bookcase,
glazed and locked, repudiated all familiarities. Mr Pitt, in bronze, on  the
top,  with  no  trace  of  his celestial  origin'  about  him,  guarded  the
unattainable  treasure like an  enchanted Moor. A  dusty  urn at  each  high
corner, dug up from an ancient tomb, preached  desolation and decay, as from
two pulpits; and the chimney-glass, reflecting Mr Dombey and his portrait at
one blow, seemed fraught with melancholy meditations.
     The  stiff and stark fire-irons appeared to claim a nearer relationship
than anything else there to  Mr  Dombey, with  his buttoned coat, his  white
cravat, his heavy gold watch-chain, and his creaking boots.
     But  this  was  before  the  arrival of  Mr and Mrs Chick,  his  lawful
relatives, who soon presented themselves.
     'My  dear  Paul,'  Mrs  Chick  murmured,  as  she  embraced  him,  'the
beginning, I hope, of many joyful days!'
     'Thank you, Louisa,' said Mr Dombey, grimly. 'How do you do, Mr John?'
     'How do you do, Sir?' said Chick.
     He  gave Mr Dombey his hand, as if he feared it might electrify him. Mr
Dombey  tool:  it  as if it were a  fish, or seaweed,  or  some  such clammy
substance, and immediately returned it to him with exalted politeness.
     'Perhaps, Louisa,'  said Mr Dombey, slightly turning his  head  in  his
cravat, as if it were a socket, 'you would have preferred a fire?'
     'Oh, my dear  Paul,  no,' said Mrs Chick, who  had much ado to keep her
teeth from chattering; 'not for me.'
     'Mr John,' said Mr Dombey, 'you are not sensible of any chill?'
     Mr John, who had already got both  his  hands in  his pockets over  the
wrists, and was on the very threshold of that  same  canine chorus which had
given Mrs Chick so much offence on a former  occasion, protested that he was
perfectly comfortable.
     He added  in a low voice,  'With my  tiddle tol toor rul' - when he was
providentially stopped by Towlinson, who announced:
     'Miss Tox!'
     And enter that fair enslaver, with a blue nose and indescribably frosty
face, referable to her being very thinly clad in  a  maze of fluttering odds
and ends, to do honour to the ceremony.
     'How do you do, Miss Tox?' said Mr Dombey.
     Miss  Tox, in the midst  of her  spreading gauzes, went down altogether
like an opera-glass shutting-up; she curtseyed so low, in  acknowledgment of
Mr Dombey's advancing a step or two to meet her.
     'I can never  forget this occasion, Sir,' said Miss Tox,  softly. ''Tis
impossible. My dear Louisa, I can hardly believe the evidence of my senses.'
     If Miss Tox could believe the evidence of one of  her  senses, it was a
very  cold  day. That  was quite  clear. She took  an  early opportunity  of
promoting the circulation in the tip of her nose by secretly chafing it with
her  pocket handkerchief,  lest, by  its very  low  temperature,  it  should
disagreeably astonish the baby when she came to kiss it.
     The  baby  soon appeared,  carried in  great glory  by  Richards; while
Florence, in custody of that  active young  constable, Susan Nipper, brought
up  the rear. Though  the whole  nursery party were dressed  by this time in
lighter  mourning than  at first, there was enough in the  appearance of the
bereaved children to make the day no brighter. The baby  too - it might have
been Miss Tox's nose - began  to cry. Thereby, as it happened, preventing Mr
Chick  from the awkward fulfilment of a  very honest purpose he  had;  which
was,  to make  much  of  Florence.  For  this  gentleman,  insensible to the
superior claims of a perfect Dombey (perhaps on account of having the honour
to be united  to  a  Dombey himself,  and being  familiar  with excellence),
really liked her, and showed  that he liked her, and was about to show it in
his own way now, when Paul cried, and his helpmate stopped him short
     'Now Florence, child!'  said  her  aunt,  briskly, 'what are you doing,
love? Show yourself to him. Engage his attention, my dear!'
     The atmosphere  became or might have  become colder and colder, when Mr
Dombey stood frigidly watching his little daughter, who, clapping her hands,
and standing On tip-toe before the throne of his son and heir,  lured him to
bend down from his high  estate,  and  look  at  her.  Some  honest  act  of
Richards's may have aided the effect, but he  did  look  down, and held  his
peace. As  his sister  hid behind her nurse, he followed her with his  eyes;
and when  she  peeped  out with a  merry cry to him, he sprang up and crowed
lustily - laughing  outright when she ran in upon him; and seeming to fondle
her curls with his tiny hands, while she smothered him with kisses.
     Was  Mr Dombey  pleased to  see this? He  testified no pleasure by  the
relaxation  of a nerve;  but  outward  tokens  of any kind  of  feeling were
unusual with him. If any sunbeam stole into  the room to light the  children
at their play, it  never  reached his  face.  He  looked  on so fixedly  and
coldly,  that the warm light vanished even from the laughing  eyes of little
Florence, when, at last, they happened to meet his.
     It was a dull,  grey, autumn day indeed, and in  a minute's  pause  and
silence that took place, the leaves fell sorrowfully.
     'Mr John,' said Mr Dombey, referring to his watch, and assuming his hat
and gloves. 'Take my  sister, if you please: my arm today is Miss Tox's. You
had better go first with Master Paul, Richards. Be very careful.'
     In Mr Dombey's carriage, Dombey and Son, Miss Tox, Mrs Chick, Richards,
and Florence.  In a little carriage following it, Susan Nipper and the owner
Mr Chick. Susan  looking out of window,  without  intermission, as a  relief
from the embarrassment of confronting the  large face of that gentleman, and
thinking  whenever  anything  rattled  that he was putting up  in  paper  an
appropriate pecuniary compliment for herself.
     Once  upon  the road to church,  Mr Dombey clapped  his  hands  for the
amusement of his son. At which instance of parental enthusiasm Miss Tox  was
enchanted. But exclusive  of this incident, the chief difference between the
christening party and a party in a  mourning coach consisted  in the colours
of the carriage and horses.
     Arrived  at  the  church  steps,  they  were received  by  a portentous
beadle.' Mr  Dombey dismounting first to  help the  ladies out, and standing
near him  at  the church  door,  looked  like another beadle. A  beadle less
gorgeous but more dreadful; the beadle  of  private life; the beadle  of our
business and our bosoms.
     Miss Tox's hand trembled as she slipped it through Mr Dombey's arm, and
felt  herself  escorted  up  the  steps,  preceded by a  cocked  hat  and  a
Babylonian   collar.   It  seemed  for  a  moment  like  that  other  solemn
institution, 'Wilt thou have this man, Lucretia?' 'Yes, I will.'
     'Please to  bring the child in quick out  of the air there,'  whispered
the beadle, holding open the inner door of the church.
     Little Paul might have asked with Hamlet 'into my grave?'  so chill and
earthy was  the place. The tall shrouded pulpit and reading desk; the dreary
perspective of  empty pews  stretching away under the galleries,  and  empty
benches mounting to the roof and lost in the shadow of the great grim organ;
the  dusty  matting and  cold stone  slabs;  the grisly  free  seats' in the
aisles; and the damp corner by the bell-rope,  where the black trestles used
for funerals were stowed away,  along with  some shovels and baskets,  and a
coil  or two  of  deadly-looking rope;  the strange,  unusual, uncomfortable
smell,  and  the  cadaverous light; were  all  in unison. It was a cold  and
dismal scene.
     'There's a wedding  just on,  Sir,' said the beadle, 'but it'll be over
directly, if you'll walk into the westry here.
     Before he turned again to lead the way,  he gave Mr Dombey a bow  and a
half smile of recognition, importing that he (the beadle) remembered to have
had the pleasure of  attending on him when he buried his wife, and  hoped he
had enjoyed himself since.
     The  very  wedding looked  dismal as they passed in front of the altar.
The bride was too old and the bridegroom too young, and a superannuated beau
with one eye and an eyeglass stuck in  its blank  companion, was giving away
the  lady,  while the friends  were shivering. In the  vestry  the  fire was
smoking;  and an over-aged and  over-worked and under-paid attorney's clerk,
'making a search,' was running his forefinger down the parchment pages of an
immense register  (one  of  a  long series of similar  volumes)  gorged with
burials. Over the fireplace was a ground-plan of  the  vaults underneath the
church; and Mr Chick, skimming the  literary portion of it aloud, by  way of
enlivening the  company, read  the reference  to Mrs Dombey's tomb  in full,
before he could stop himself.
     After another cold interval, a wheezy little  pew-opener afflicted with
an asthma,  appropriate to the churchyard,  if not to  the  church, summoned
them to the font - a rigid marble  basin which seemed to have been playing a
churchyard game  at  cup and  ball with its matter of fact  pedestal, and to
have been just that moment caught  on the top  of it. Here  they waited some
little time while the  marriage party enrolled themselves; and meanwhile the
wheezy  little pew-opener -  partly  in consequence  of  her infirmity,  and
partly  that  the  marriage  party  might not  forget her  - went about  the
building coughing like a grampus.
     Presently the clerk (the only cheerful-looking object there, and he was
an undertaker) came up with a jug of warm water, and  said something,  as he
poured  it  into the font, about taking  the  chill off; which  millions  of
gallons  boiling  hot  could  not  have  done  for the  occasion.  Then  the
clergyman, an amiable and mild-looking young curate, but obviously afraid of
the  baby, appeared like the  principal character in a ghost-story, 'a  tall
figure all in white;' at sight of whom Paul rent the air with his cries, and
never left off again till he was taken out black in the face.
     Even when that event had happened, to the great relief of everybody, he
was heard under the portico, during the  rest of  the ceremony, now fainter,
now louder, now hushed, now bursting forth again with an irrepressible sense
of his wrongs. This so distracted the attention of the two  ladies, that Mrs
Chick was  constantly deploying into the centre aisle, to send out  messages
by the pew-opener, while Miss Tox kept her Prayer-book open at the Gunpowder
Plot, and occasionally read responses from that service.
     During the whole of these proceedings,  Mr Dombey remained as impassive
and gentlemanly as ever, and perhaps assisted in making it so cold, that the
young curate smoked  at the mouth as he  read. The only  time that he unbent
his  visage  in  the  least,  was  when  the  clergyman, in delivering (very
unaffectedly  and  simply)  the  closing exhortation, relative to the future
examination  of  the child by  the sponsors, happened to  rest his eye on Mr
Chick; and then Mr  Dombey  might have been seen  to  express  by a majestic
look, that he would like to catch him at it.
     It might have been well for  Mr Dombey,  if  he had thought of  his own
dignity  a little less; and had thought of the great origin  and  purpose of
the ceremony in which he took so formal and so stiff  a part, a little more.
His arrogance contrasted strangely with its history.
     When it was all over, he again gave his  arm to Miss Tox, and conducted
her  to the vestry, where  he informed  the  clergyman  how much pleasure it
would have given him to have solicited the  honour of his company at dinner,
but for the unfortunate state of his household affairs. The register signed,
and the  fees paid, and  the  pew-opener  (whose  cough was  very bad again)
remembered, and the beadle  gratified, and the sexton  (who was accidentally
on the doorsteps, looking with great interest at the weather) not forgotten,
they got  into  the  carriage  again,  and  drove  home  in  the  same bleak
fellowship.
     There they found  Mr Pitt turning up his nose at  a cold collation, set
forth in  a cold  pomp of glass and silver, and  looking  more  like a  dead
dinner lying in  state  than a social refreshment. On their arrival Miss Tox
produced a mug for her godson, and Mr Chick a knife and  fork and spoon in a
case. Mr Dombey also produced  a  bracelet for Miss Tox; and, on the receipt
of this token, Miss Tox was tenderly affected.
     'Mr John,' said Mr Dombey, 'will you take  the bottom of  the table, if
you please? What have you got there, Mr John?'
     'I have got a cold fillet of veal here, Sir,' replied Mr Chick, rubbing
his numbed hands hard together. 'What have you got there, Sir?'
     'This,' returned Mr Dombey, 'is some cold preparation of calf's head, I
think. I see cold fowls - ham - patties - salad - lobster.  Miss Tox will do
me the honour of taking some wine? Champagne to Miss Tox.'
     There was a toothache in everything. The wine was  so  bitter cold that
it forced a little  scream from Miss Tox, which she  had great difficulty in
turning into a 'Hem!' The veal had  come from such  an airy pantry, that the
first taste  of it  had struck  a sensation  as of cold  lead  to Mr Chick's
extremities.  Mr Dombey alone remained unmoved. He  might have  been hung up
for sale at a Russian fair as a specimen of a frozen gentleman.
     The  prevailing influence was too much even for his sister. She made no
effort at flattery or small talk, and directed all her efforts to looking as
warm as she could.
     'Well, Sir,' said  Mr Chick, making  a desperate plunge,  after a  long
silence, and filling a glass of sherry; 'I shall drink this, if you'll allow
me, Sir, to little Paul.'
     'Bless him!' murmured Miss Tox, taking a sip of wine.
     'Dear little Dombey!' murmured Mrs Chick.
     'Mr John,' said Mr Dombey, with severe gravity,  'my son would feel and
express himself obliged to you, I have no doubt, if  he could appreciate the
favour you have done him. He  will prove, in time to come, I trust, equal to
any  responsibility  that  the obliging disposition  of  his  relations  and
friends, in private,  or the onerous nature of our  position, in public, may
impose upon him.'
     The tone in  which this  was  said admitting of nothing  more, Mr Chick
relapsed into low spirits and silence. Not so Miss Tox, who, having listened
to Mr Dombey with even a more emphatic attention than usual, and with a more
expressive tendency of her head to one side, now leant across the table, and
said to Mrs Chick softly:
     'Louisa!'
     'My dear,' said Mrs Chick.
     'Onerous nature of our position in public may - I have forgotten
     the exact term.'
     'Expose him to,' said Mrs Chick.
     'Pardon me,  my  dear,' returned Miss Tox,  'I  think not. It  was more
rounded  and flowing.  Obliging disposition  of  relations  and  friends  in
private, or onerous nature of position in public - may - impose upon him!'
     'Impose upon him, to be sure,' said Mrs Chick.
     Miss  Tox struck  her delicate hands  together lightly, in triumph; and
added, casting up her eyes, 'eloquence indeed!'
     Mr Dombey, in the meanwhile,  had  issued orders for  the attendance of
Richards,  who now  entered curtseying,  but without  the baby;  Paul  being
asleep after  the fatigues of  the  morning. Mr Dombey, having  delivered  a
glass of wine to this vassal, addressed her in the following words: Miss Tox
previously  settling  her   head  on  one  side,  and  making  other  little
arrangements for engraving them on her heart.
     'During  the six months or so, Richards, which  have seen you an inmate
of  this house,  you have  done your duty. Desiring  to  connect some little
service to you with this occasion, I considered how I could best effect that
object, and I also advised with my sister, Mrs - '
     'Chick,' interposed the gentleman of that name.
     'Oh, hush if you please!' said Miss Tox.
     'I was about  to  say  to  you, Richards,' resumed  Mr  Dombey, with an
appalling glance at Mr John, 'that I was further assisted in my decision, by
the recollection of a conversation I held with your husband in this room, on
the occasion of your  being hired,  when he disclosed to  me the  melancholy
fact that your  family,  himself at the  head,  were  sunk  and  steeped  in
ignorance.
     Richards quailed under the magnificence of the reproof.
     'I  am far from being friendly,' pursued Mr  Dombey, 'to what is called
by persons of levelling  sentiments, general education. But  it is necessary
that the  inferior  classes  should  continue to  be taught  to  know  their
position, and to conduct themselves properly. So far I  approve  of schools.
Having the  power of nominating  a  child  on  the foundation  of an ancient
establishment, called  (from a worshipful company) the  Charitable Grinders;
where  not only  is a  wholesome education bestowed upon  the scholars,  but
where a dress  and  badge  is likewise  provided  for  them;  I have  (first
communicating, through Mrs  Chick, with  your family) nominated your  eldest
son to an  existing vacancy; and he has this day, I am informed, assumed the
habit.  The  number of her  son, I believe,' said Mr  Dombey, turning to his
sister and speaking of the  child as  if  he  were  a hackney-coach, is  one
hundred and forty-seven. Louisa, you can tell her.'
     'One hundred and forty-seven,' said Mrs Chick 'The  dress, Richards, is
a nice, warm, blue baize tailed coat and cap, turned up with orange coloured
binding;  red  worsted stockings; and very strong leather small-clothes. One
might  wear the articles one's self,' said Mrs Chick, with  enthusiasm, 'and
be grateful.'
     'There, Richards!' said Miss Tox. 'Now, indeed,  you may be proud.  The
Charitable Grinders!'
     'I am  sure I am  very  much obliged, Sir,'  returned Richards faintly,
'and take it very kind that you should remember my little ones.' At the same
time  a  vision of Biler as a Charitable Grinder,  with  his very small legs
encased  in  the serviceable clothing described by Mrs  Chick,  swam  before
Richards's eyes, and made them water.
     'I am very glad  to see  you have so much feeling, Richards,' said Miss
Tox.
     'It makes one almost hope, it really does,' said Mrs Chick,  who prided
herself  on taking  trustful views of  human nature, 'that  there may yet be
some faint spark of gratitude and right feeling in the world.'
     Richards deferred to these compliments by curtseying and murmuring
     her thanks; but finding it quite impossible to recover her spirits from
the disorder into which they had been thrown by the  image of her son in his
precocious  nether  garments,  she  gradually  approached the  door  and was
heartily relieved to escape by it.
     Such temporary indications of  a partial thaw that  had  appeared  with
her, vanished with her;  and the frost  set  in  again, as cold  and hard as
ever. Mr Chick was twice heard to hum a tune at the bottom of the table, but
on both occasions  it was a fragment  of  the Dead March in Saul.  The party
seemed to get colder and colder, and to be gradually resolving itself into a
congealed and solid state,  like the collation round which it was assembled.
At length Mrs Chick  looked at Miss Tox, and Miss Tox returned the look, and
they both  rose and said it was really  time to go. Mr Dombey receiving this
announcement with perfect equanimity, they took leave of that gentleman, and
presently departed  under  the  protection of  Mr Chick; who,  when they had
turned their backs  upon the house and left its master in his usual solitary
state, put his hands in his pockets, threw himself back in the carriage, and
whistled  'With a hey ho chevy!' all through; conveying into his face  as he
did so,  an expression of such gloomy and terrible  defiance, that Mrs Chick
dared not protest, or in any way molest him.
     Richards, though she had little Paul  on  her lap, could not forget her
own first-born. She  felt  it was ungrateful; but the influence  of  the day
fell even on  the Charitable Grinders, and  she  could hardly help regarding
his pewter badge, number one hundred and forty-seven, as, somehow, a part of
its formality and sternness. She spoke, too, in the nursery, of his 'blessed
legs,' and was again troubled by his spectre in uniform.
     'I  don't  know  what I  wouldn't give,' said  Polly, 'to see  the poor
little dear before he gets used to 'em.'
     'Why, then,  I tell you what, Mrs Richards,'  retorted Nipper, who  had
been admitted to her confidence, 'see him and make your mind easy.'
     'Mr Dombey wouldn't like it,' said Polly.
     'Oh, wouldn't  he, Mrs Richards!' retorted Nipper,  'he'd  like it very
much, I think when he was asked.'
     'You wouldn't ask him, I suppose, at all?' said Polly.
     'No,  Mrs  Richards,  quite contrairy,'  returned Susan,  'and them two
inspectors Tox  and Chick, not intending to be on duty tomorrow, as  I heard
'em  say,  me and Mid  Floy  will  go along with you tomorrow  morning,  and
welcome,  Mrs Richards, if you like, for we may as well walk there as up and
down a street, and better too.'
     Polly  rejected  the  idea pretty stoutly at first;  but by little  and
little  she  began  to  entertain  it,  as  she  entertained  more  and more
distinctly  the  forbidden pictures  of  her children, and her own home.  At
length, arguing that there could be no great harm in calling for a moment at
the door, she yielded to the Nipper proposition.
     The matter being settled thus, little Paul began to cry most piteously,
as if he had a foreboding that no good would come of it.
     'What's the matter with the child?' asked Susan.
     'He's cold,  I  think,' said  Polly, walking  with him to and  fro, and
hushing him.
     It  was  a bleak  autumnal  afternoon  indeed;  and as she walked,  and
hushed, and, glancing through the  dreary windows, pressed the little fellow
closer to her breast, the withered leaves came showering down.

        CHAPTER 6.
     Paul's Second Deprivation

     Polly was beset by so many misgivings in the  morning, that but for the
incessant promptings  of  her black-eyed companion, she would have abandoned
all  thoughts  of the expedition,  and  formally petitioned for leave to see
number one  hundred and forty-seven,  under the awful shadow of  Mr Dombey's
roof. But Susan who was personally disposed  in favour of the excursion, and
who  (like  Tony  Lumpkin), if she  could bear  the disappointments of other
people  with  tolerable  fortitude,  could not abide to disappoint  herself,
threw so many  ingenious  doubts  in  the way of  this second  thought,  and
stimulated  the  original intention with so  many ingenious  arguments, that
almost as soon as Mr Dombey's stately back  was turned, and  that  gentleman
was pursuing his daily road towards the City, his unconscious son was on his
way to Staggs's Gardens.
     This  euphonious  locality  was situated  in  a suburb,  known  by  the
inhabitants  of  Staggs's  Gardens   by  the  name  of  Camberling  Town;  a
designation  which the  Strangers' Map of London, as printed (with a view to
pleasant and commodious reference)  on pocket handkerchiefs, condenses, with
some  show  of reason,  into Camden Town.  Hither the two nurses bent  their
steps, accompanied by their charges; Richards  carrying Paul, of course, and
Susan leading  little Florence  by the hand,  and giving  her such jerks and
pokes from time to time, as she considered it wholesome to administer.
     The first  shock of  a  great earthquake had, just at that period, rent
the whole neighbourhood to its centre.  Traces of its course were visible on
every side.  Houses were knocked  down; streets  broken through and stopped;
deep pits and trenches  dug in the ground; enormous  heaps of earth and clay
thrown up; buildings  that were  undermined and  shaking, propped  by  great
beams of wood. Here, a chaos of carts, overthrown and jumbled  together, lay
topsy-turvy  at  the  bottom  of  a  steep  unnatural  hill; there, confused
treasures of  iron soaked  and rusted  in something  that  had  accidentally
become a pond. Everywhere were bridges  that led nowhere; thoroughfares that
were wholly impassable; Babel towers of chimneys, wanting half their height;
temporary wooden  houses  and enclosures, in the  most unlikely  situations;
carcases of ragged tenements, and fragments of  unfinished walls and arches,
and  piles  of scaffolding,  and wildernesses of  bricks, and giant forms of
cranes, and tripods straddling above nothing. There were a hundred  thousand
shapes and substances of incompleteness, wildly mingled out of their places,
upside down,  burrowing in the earth, aspiring in the air, mouldering in the
water, and unintelligible as any dream. Hot springs and fiery eruptions, the
usual attendants upon earthquakes, lent their contributions of  confusion to
the scene. Boiling water hissed and heaved within dilapidated walls; whence,
also, the glare and roar of flames  came  issuing forth; and mounds of ashes
blocked  up  rights  of  way, and  wholly changed  the law and custom of the
neighbourhood.
     In short,  the yet  unfinished  and unopened Railroad was in  progress;
and, from the  very core  of all  this dire disorder, trailed smoothly away,
upon its mighty course of civilisation and improvement.
     But as yet, the neighbourhood  was shy to  own the Railroad. One or two
bold speculators had projected streets; and one had  built a little, but had
stopped among the  mud and  ashes  to  consider farther of  it.  A  bran-new
Tavern, redolent of fresh mortar and size, and fronting nothing at  all, had
taken for its sign The Railway Arms; but that might be rash enterprise - and
then  it hoped to  sell drink to the workmen. So, the  Excavators' House  of
Call had  sprung  up from  a beer-shop; and the old-established Ham and Beef
Shop had  become the Railway Eating House, with a  roast leg of pork  daily,
through interested  motives  of a similar immediate and popular description.
Lodging-house  keepers  were  favourable in  like manner;  and  for the like
reasons were not to be trusted. The general belief was very slow. There were
frowzy  fields, and cow-houses,  and dunghills, and dustheaps,  and ditches,
and gardens, and summer-houses, and carpet-beating grounds, at the very door
of the Railway. Little  tumuli of oyster shells in the oyster season, and of
lobster  shells  in the lobster  season,  and  of broken crockery  and faded
cabbage leaves in  all seasons, encroached upon its high places. Posts,  and
rails, and  old cautions  to trespassers,  and  backs  of  mean  houses, and
patches of wretched vegetation,  stared it  out of  countenance. Nothing was
the better for it,  or thought of being  so. If  the miserable  waste ground
lying near  it could have laughed, it would have laughed  it  to scorn, like
many of the miserable neighbours.
     Staggs's Gardens was uncommonly  incredulous. It  was a  little row  of
houses, with little squalid patches of ground before them,  fenced off  with
old doors, barrel  staves,  scraps  of  tarpaulin,  and  dead  bushes;  with
bottomless  tin kettles  and  exhausted iron  fenders, thrust into the gaps.
Here, the  Staggs's Gardeners trained scarlet beans, kept fowls and rabbits,
erected rotten summer-houses  (one  was an  old  boat), dried  clothes,  and
smoked pipes. Some were of  opinion  that Staggs's Gardens derived its  name
from  a deceased  capitalist,  one  Mr  Staggs,  who had  built  it  for his
delectation.  Others, who had a natural taste for the country, held that  it
dated from  those rural  times  when the antlered  herd, under the  familiar
denomination of Staggses, had resorted to its shady precincts. Be this as it
may,  Staggs's Gardens was regarded by its population as a sacred grove  not
to be withered by Railroads;  and  so  confident were they generally  of its
long   outliving  any  such   ridiculous   inventions,   that   the   master
chimney-sweeper at  the corner, who was understood to  take  the lead in the
local politics of the Gardens, had publicly declared that on the occasion of
the Railroad opening, if ever it did open, two of his boys should ascend the
flues  of his dwelling, with instructions to hail the failure with  derisive
cheers from the chimney-pots.
     To  this  unhallowed spot,  the  very  name  of which had hitherto been
carefully concealed from Mr Dombey by his sister,  was little Paul now borne
by Fate and Richards
     'That's my house, Susan,' said Polly, pointing it out.
     'Is it, indeed, Mrs Richards?' said Susan, condescendingly.
     'And there's my sister  Jemima at  the door, I do declare' cried Polly,
'with my own sweet precious baby in her arms!'
     The sight added  such an extensive pair of wings to Polly's impatience,
that she set off down the Gardens at a run, and bouncing on  Jemima, changed
babies  with her  in  a  twinkling; to the  unutterable astonishment of that
young damsel, on whom the heir of the Dombeys seemed to have fallen from the
clouds.
     'Why, Polly!' cried Jemima. 'You! what a turn you  have given me! who'd
have thought it! come along in Polly! How well you  do look to be sure!  The
children will go half wild to see you Polly, that they will.'
     That they did, if one might judge from the noise they made, and the way
in which they dashed at Polly and dragged her  to a low chair in the chimney
corner, where her own  honest apple  face became immediately the centre of a
bunch of smaller pippins, all laying their rosy cheeks close to it,  and all
evidently the growth of the same  tree. As to  Polly, she was full  as noisy
and vehement  as the  children; and it was not until  she  was quite out  of
breath,  and her  hair was hanging  all about her flushed face,  and her new
christening  attire was very much dishevelled,  that any pause took place in
the  confusion. Even then, the smallest Toodle but  one remained in her lap,
holding on tight  with both  arms round her neck; while the smallest  Toodle
but  two mounted on the back of the chair, and made desperate efforts,  with
one leg in the air, to kiss her round the corner.
     'Look! there's a pretty little lady  come to see you,' said Polly; 'and
see how quiet she is! what a beautiful little lady, ain't she?'
     This  reference  to  Florence, who  had been  standing  by the door not
unobservant of what passed,  directed the attention of the  younger branches
towards her;  and had  likewise the happy  effect  of  leading to the formal
recognition of Miss Nipper, who was not quite free from a misgiving that she
had been already slighted.
     'Oh do come in and sit down a minute, Susan, please,' said Polly. 'This
is my sister Jemima, this  is. Jemima, I don't  know  what  I should ever do
with myself, if it wasn't for Susan Nipper; I shouldn't  be here now but for
her.'
     'Oh do sit down, Miss Nipper, if you please,' quoth Jemima.
     Susan  took  the  extreme  corner  of  a  chair,  with  a  stately  and
ceremonious aspect.
     'I never was so glad to see anybody in all my  life; now really I never
was, Miss Nipper,' said Jemima.
     Susan relaxing, took a little more of the chair, and smiled graciously.
     'Do untie your bonnet-strings, and make yourself at home,  Miss Nipper,
please,' entreated Jemima. 'I am afraid it's a poorer place than you're used
to; but you'll make allowances, I'm sure.'
     The black-eyed was so softened by this deferential  behaviour, that she
caught  up little Miss  Toodle who was running past, and took her to Banbury
Cross immediately.
     'But where's my pretty boy?' said Polly. 'My poor fellow?  I  came  all
this way to see him in his new clothes.'
     'Ah what a pity!' cried Jemima. 'He'll break his  heart, when he  hears
his mother has been here. He's at school, Polly.'
     'Gone already!'
     'Yes. He went for the first time yesterday, for fear he should lose any
learning. But it's half-holiday, Polly: if you could only stop till he comes
home - you and Miss Nipper, leastways,' said Jemima, mindful in good time of
the dignity of the black-eyed.
     'And how does he look, Jemima, bless him!' faltered Polly.
     'Well, really he don't look so bad as you'd suppose,' returned Jemima.
     'Ah!' said Polly, with emotion, 'I knew his legs must be too short.'
     His legs  is  short,' returned Jemima; 'especially behind; but  they'll
get longer, Polly, every day.'
     It  was  a slow, prospective  kind of consolation; but the cheerfulness
and good nature with which it was administered, gave  it a  value it did not
intrinsically  possess.  After a moment's silence, Polly  asked,  in  a more
sprightly manner:
     'And  where's   Father,   Jemima  dear?'  -  for  by  that  patriarchal
appellation, Mr Toodle was generally known in the family.
     'There again!' said Jemima. 'What a pity! Father took his  dinner  with
him this morning, and isn't coming home till night. But he's always  talking
of you, Polly, and telling the children  about you; and is the  peaceablest,
patientest, best-temperedest soul in the world,  as he  always was and  will
be!'
     'Thankee, Jemima,' cried the simple Polly; delighted by the speech, and
disappointed by the absence.
     'Oh  you  needn't  thank  me,  Polly,' said her sister,  giving  her  a
sounding  kiss upon the  cheek, and then dancing little  Paul cheerfully. 'I
say the same of you sometimes, and think it too.'
     In spite of the  double disappointment, it  was impossible to regard in
the light  of a failure a visit which was greeted with such a  reception; so
the sisters  talked  hopefully about  family matters,  and  about Biler, and
about all  his brothers and sisters: while the black-eyed, having  performed
several  journeys  to  Banbury  Cross  and  back, took  sharp  note  of  the
furniture,  the Dutch  clock, the  cupboard, the castle on the  mantel-piece
with  red  and  green windows  in  it,  susceptible  of  illumination  by  a
candle-end within; and the  pair of small black velvet kittens, each with  a
lady's  reticule  in  its  mouth; regarded  by  the  Staggs's  Gardeners  as
prodigies of imitative art. The conversation soon becoming  general lest the
black-eyed  should  go off at  score  and  turn sarcastic,  that young  lady
related to Jemima a summary of everything she knew concerning Mr Dombey, his
prospects, family, pursuits, and character. Also an exact  inventory  of her
personal wardrobe, and some account of her principal relations  and friends.
Having  relieved her mind  of  these disclosures, she partook of shrimps and
porter, and evinced a disposition to swear eternal friendship.
     Little Florence herself was not  behind-hand in improving the occasion;
for, being conducted  forth by the young Toodles to inspect some toad-stools
and other curiosities of the Gardens, she entered with them, heart and soul,
on the formation of a  temporary breakwater across  a small  green pool that
had collected in a corner. She was still busily engaged in that labour, when
sought and found by Susan; who, such was her  sense  of duty, even under the
humanizing  influence   of  shrimps,   delivered  a  moral  address  to  her
(punctuated  with thumps) on her degenerate  nature, while  washing her face
and hands; and predicted that she would bring the  grey hairs of  her family
in general, with  sorrow to the grave.  After some  delay, occasioned  by  a
pretty  long  confidential  interview above  stairs  on pecuniary  subjects,
between Polly and Jemima, an interchange of babies was  again effected - for
Polly had all this timeretained  her own child, and Jemima little Paul - and
the visitors took leave.
     But  first  the young Toodles,  victims of a pious fraud, were  deluded
into repairing in a body to a chandler's  shop in the neighbourhood, for the
ostensible purpose of spending a penny; and  when the coast was quite clear,
Polly  fled:  Jemima  calling  after her  that if they could only  go  round
towards the City Road on their way back, they would be  sure to meet  little
Biler coming from school.
     'Do you  think that  we might make  time to  go a little round in  that
direction, Susan?' inquired Polly, when they halted to take breath.
     'Why not, Mrs Richards?' returned Susan.
     'It's getting on towards our dinner time you know,' said Polly.
     But lunch  had rendered her  companion  more than indifferent  to  this
grave consideration, so she allowed no weight to it, and they resolved to go
'a little round.'
     Now, it  happened  that  poor Biler's life had  been,  since  yesterday
morning, rendered weary by the costume of the Charitable Grinders. The youth
of the streets could  not endure  it. No  young vagabond could be brought to
bear its  contemplation for a  moment,  without  throwing  himself upon  the
unoffending wearer, and doing him a mischief. His social existence  had been
more  like  that  of  an  early  Christian, than  an innocent child  of  the
nineteenth  century.  He  had  been  stoned in  the  streets.  He  had  been
overthrown into  gutters; bespattered  with mud; violently flattened against
posts.  Entire strangers  to his  person had lifted  his yellow  cap off his
head, and  cast it  to the winds.  His legs had  not  only  undergone verbal
criticisms  and  revilings, but  had  been handled  and  pinched.  That very
morning, he had received a perfectly unsolicited black eye on his way to the
Grinders'  establishment,  and  had  been punished for it by the  master:  a
superannuated  old Grinder  of  savage  disposition, who had  been appointed
schoolmaster because he didn't know anything, and  wasn't  fit for anything,
and for whose cruel cane all chubby little boys had a perfect fascination.'
     Thus  it  fell  out that Biler, on his  way  home, sought  unfrequented
paths;  and  slunk along  by narrow passages  and back streets, to avoid his
tormentors. Being compelled to emerge  into the  main road, his  ill fortune
brought him at last where a small party of boys, headed by a ferocious young
butcher, were  lying in wait for  any means  of  pleasurable excitement that
might  happen. These, finding a Charitable  Grinder in  the midst  of them -
unaccountably  delivered over, as  it  were, into  their  hands -  set  up a
general yell and rushed upon him.
     But  it  so fell out likewise,  that, at  the same time, Polly, looking
hopelessly along the road before  her, after a good hour's walk, had said it
was no  use going  any  further, when suddenly  she  saw this sight. She  no
sooner saw it  than, uttering a  hasty exclamation, and giving Master Dombey
to the black-eyed, she started to the rescue of her unhappy little son.
     Surprises, like  misfortunes, rarely come alone.  The astonished  Susan
Nipper and her two young charges were  rescued by the bystanders from  under
the very wheels  of a  passing carriage  before they knew what had happened;
and at that moment (it was market day) a thundering alarm of 'Mad Bull!' was
raised.
     With a  wild confusion before her, of  people running up and  down, and
shouting, and  wheels  running over them, and  boys fighting,  and mad bulls
coming  up,  and the nurse in the  midst of all these dangers  being torn to
pieces,  Florence screamed and  ran. She ran till she  was exhausted, urging
Susan  to  do  the  same;  and then, stopping and  wringing her hands as she
remembered they had left the  other nurse behind, found, with a sensation of
terror not to be described, that she was quite alone.
     'Susan! Susan!'  cried Florence, clapping her hands in the very ecstasy
of her alarm. 'Oh, where are they? where are they?'
     'Where are they?' said an old  woman, coming hobbling across as fast as
she  could from the opposite side of the  way. 'Why did  you  run  away from
'em?'
     'I was frightened,' answered  Florence.  'I didn't  know what  I did. I
thought they were with me. Where are they?'
     The old woman took her by the wrist, and said, 'I'll show you.'
     She was a  very ugly old woman, with red  rims  round  her eyes, and  a
mouth that  mumbled and chattered of  itself when she  was not speaking. She
was miserably  dressed, and carried  some skins over her  arm. She seemed to
have  followed Florence some little way at all events, for  she had lost her
breath; and this made  her  uglier still, as she  stood trying to regain it:
working her shrivelled yellow face and throat into all sorts of contortions.
     Florence was afraid of her, and  looked,  hesitating, up the street, of
which she had almost reached the bottom.  It was a solitary place  - more  a
back road than a street - and  there  was no one in it but her- self and the
old woman.
     'You needn't be frightened now,' said  the old woman, still holding her
tight. 'Come along with me.'
     'I - I don't know you. What's your name?' asked Florence.
     'Mrs Brown,' said the old woman. 'Good Mrs Brown.'
     'Are they near here?' asked Florence, beginning to be led away.
     'Susan ain't far off,' said  Good Mrs  Brown; 'and the others are close
to her.'
     'Is anybody hurt?' cried Florence.
     'Not a bit of it,' said Good Mrs Brown.
     The child  shed  tears of delight on hearing this,  and accompanied the
old  woman willingly; though she could not help glancing at her face as they
went  along - particularly at that industrious mouth - and wondering whether
Bad Mrs Brown, if there were such a person, was at all like her.
     They had not  gone far, but had gone by some very uncomfortable places,
such as brick-fields and tile-yards, when the old woman turned down a  dirty
lane, where the mud lay in deep  black ruts in the  middle of  the road. She
stopped before a shabby little house, as closely shut up as a house that was
full of cracks and crevices could be.  Opening the door with  a key she took
out of her bonnet, she pushed the child  before her into a  back room, where
there was a great  heap of rags  of different  colours lying on the floor; a
heap  of bones, and  a heap  of  sifted  dust or  cinders; but  there was no
furniture at all, and the walls and ceiling were quite black.
     The child  became  so terrified  the  she  was stricken speechless, and
looked as though about to swoon.
     'Now  don't be a young mule,' said Good Mrs Brown,  reviving her with a
shake. 'I'm not a going to hurt you. Sit upon the rags.'
     Florence  obeyed   her,   holding   out  her  folded   hands,  in  mute
supplication.
     'I'm not a going to  keep you,  even, above  an hour,' said Mrs  Brown.
'D'ye understand what I say?'
     The child answered with great difficulty, 'Yes.'
     'Then,' said  Good  Mrs Brown, taking her own seat on the bones, 'don't
vex me. If you don't, I tell you I  won't hurt you. But if you do, I'll kill
you.  I could have you killed at any time - even if you was  in your own bed
at home. Now let's know who you are, and what you are, and all about it.'
     The  old woman's threats and promises; the dread of giving her offence;
and  the habit, unusual to a child, but  almost natural  to Florence now, of
being quiet, and repressing  what she felt,  and feared, and  hoped; enabled
her to do  this bidding, and to tell her little history, or what she knew of
it. Mrs Brown listened attentively, until she had finished.
     'So your name's Dombey, eh?' said Mrs Brown.
     'I want that pretty frock, Miss Dombey,' said Good Mrs Brown, 'and that
little bonnet,  and a  petticoat  or  two, and anything else  you can spare.
Come! Take 'em off.'
     Florence obeyed, as fast as  her  trembling hands would allow; keeping,
all the while, a frightened eye on Mrs Brown. When she  had divested herself
of all the articles of apparel mentioned by that lady, Mrs  B. examined them
at leisure,  and  seemed  tolerably  well satisfied with  their  quality and
value.
     'Humph!' she said, running her eyes over the  child's slight figure, 'I
don't  see  anything else -  except the shoes. I must  have the shoes,  Miss
Dombey.'
     Poor little  Florence took them  off with equal alacrity, only too glad
to  have  any  more means  of  conciliation  about  her. The old  woman then
produced some wretched  substitutes from  the bottom  of  the heap  of rags,
which she turned up  for that  purpose; together with a  girl's cloak, quite
worn out and very old; and the crushed remains of a bonnet that had probably
been  picked  up from some  ditch or dunghill.  In this dainty raiment,  she
instructed  Florence to dress  herself;  and  as  such preparation seemed  a
prelude to her release, the  child  complied  with increased  readiness,  if
possible.
     In hurriedly putting on  the  bonnet,  if  that  may be called a bonnet
which was more like a pad to carry loads on, she caught it in her hair which
grew luxuriantly, and could not immediately disentangle it.  Good  Mrs Brown
whipped out a large  pair of scissors, and fell  into an unaccountable state
of excitement.
     'Why couldn't you  let me  be!' said Mrs Brown, 'when  I was contented?
You little fool!'
     'I beg your pardon. I don't know what I have done,' panted Florence. 'I
couldn't help it.'
     'Couldn't help it!' cried Mrs Brown. 'How  do you expect I can help it?
Why, Lord!' said the old woman, ruffling her curls with a  furious pleasure,
'anybody  but me  would have had  'em  off, first  of all.' Florence was  so
relieved to find that it  was only her hair and not her head which Mrs Brown
coveted, that she offered  no resistance  or entreaty, and merely raised her
mild eyes towards the face of that good soul.
     'If I hadn't once had a gal of my own - beyond seas now- that was proud
of  her  hair,'  said Mrs Brown,  'I'd  have had every lock of it. She's far
away, she's far away! Oho! Oho!'
     Mrs Brown's  was  not  a melodious cry,  but, accompanied  with a  wild
tossing up of her  lean arms, it was full of passionate grief, and  thrilled
to  the heart of Florence, whom  it  frightened more  than ever. It  had its
part, perhaps, in saving her curls; for Mrs Brown, after hovering  about her
with the scissors for some  moments, like a new kind of butterfly,  bade her
hide them under the bonnet  and  let no trace  of them escape  to tempt her.
Having accomplished this victory over herself, Mrs Brown resumed her seat on
the bones, and smoked  a very  short black pipe, mowing and mumbling all the
time, as if she were eating the stem.
     When  the pipe was smoked out,  she gave  the  child  a  rabbit-skin to
carry, that  she might appear the more like her ordinary companion, and told
her that  she was now going to lead her to a public  street whence she could
inquire  her way to  her  friends.  But she  cautioned her,  with threats of
summary and  deadly  vengeance  in  case of  disobedience,  not  to  talk to
strangers, nor to repair to her own home (which may have been  too near  for
Mrs Brown's convenience), but to her  father's office  in the  City; also to
wait at the street corner  where  she would be left, until the  clock struck
three. These directions  Mrs Brown enforced with assurances that there would
be potent eyes and  ears  in her  employment cognizant of  all  she did; and
these directions Florence promised faithfully and earnestly to observe.
     At length,  Mrs  Brown, issuing forth, conducted her changed and ragged
little friend  through a labyrinth of  narrow streets  and lanes and alleys,
which emerged, after a long time, upon a stable yard, with a  gateway at the
end, whence the  roar of  a great thoroughfare made itself audible. Pointing
out this gateway, and informing Florence that when the  clocks struck  three
she  was to go to the left, Mrs Brown, after making  a parting grasp  at her
hair which seemed involuntary and quite beyond her own control, told her she
knew  what to  do,  and bade  her  go and  do it: remembering  that  she was
watched.
     With a lighter  heart,  but  still  sore  afraid, Florence felt herself
released,  and tripped  off to the  corner. When she reached  it, she looked
back and  saw the  head of  Good Mrs Brown  peeping  out  of  the low wooden
passage, where she had issued  her parting injunctions; likewise the fist of
Good  Mrs Brown  shaking  towards  her. But  though she  often  looked  back
afterwards - every minute,  at least, in her nervous recollection of the old
woman - she could not see her again.
     Florence  remained there, looking at the bustle in the street, and more
and more bewildered  by it; and in the meanwhile the clocks appeared to have
made up  their minds never to strike three  any more.  At last  the steeples
rang out three o'clock; there was one close by, so she couldn't be mistaken;
and - after  often looking  over her shoulder, and often going a little way,
and as often coming  back again,  lest the all-powerful spies  of Mrs  Brown
should take offence  - she hurried off, as fast as she could in her slipshod
shoes, holding the rabbit-skin tight in her hand.
     All she knew of her father's offices was  that they  belonged to Dombey
and Son, and that that was a great power belonging to the City. So she could
only ask  the way to Dombey and Son's in the City; and as she generally made
inquiry of children - being afraid to ask grown people - she got very little
satisfaction  indeed. But  by  dint  of  asking her way  to the City after a
while, and dropping the rest  of her inquiry for the present, she really did
advance, by  slow degrees, towards  the heart of that great  region which is
governed by the terrible Lord Mayor.
     Tired of walking, repulsed and  pushed about, stunned by the noise  and
confusion, anxious for her brother and the nurses, terrified by what she had
undergone,  and the prospect of encountering  her  angry father  in such  an
altered state; perplexed and  frightened alike by what had passed,  and what
was passing,  and what was yet before  her; Florence went upon her weary way
with tearful eyes, and  once or  twice could not  help stopping  to ease her
bursting  heart  by  crying bitterly. But  few  people noticed  her at those
times, in the garb she  wore: or if they did, believed that she was  tutored
to excite  compassion,  and passed on. Florence,  too, called to her aid all
the  firmness and self-reliance of a  character that her sad experience  had
prematurely formed and  tried: and keeping  the end she had in view steadily
before her, steadily pursued it.
     It was  full two hours later in the afternoon than when she had started
on this strange adventure, when, escaping  from the  clash and clangour of a
narrow street  full of carts and waggons, she peeped into a kind of wharf or
landing-place  upon the river-side, where there were  a great many packages,
casks, and boxes, strewn about; a large pair of wooden scales; and a  little
wooden house on wheels, outside of which, looking at  the neighbouring masts
and boats, a stout man stood whistling, with his pen behind his ear, and his
hands in his pockets, as if his day's work were nearly done.
     'Now then! 'said this man, happening  to  turn round.  'We haven't  got
anything for you, little girl. Be off!'
     'If you please, is this the City?'  asked the trembling daughter of the
Dombeys.
     'Ah! It's the  City. You know that well enough,  I  daresay. Be off! We
haven't got anything for you.'
     'I don't want anything, thank  you,' was the timid answer.  'Except  to
know the way to Dombey and Son's.'
     The man who had been strolling carelessly towards her, seemed surprised
by this reply, and looking attentively in her face, rejoined:
     'Why, what can you want with Dombey and Son's?'
     'To know the way there, if you please.'
     The man looked at her yet  more curiously, and  rubbed the  back of his
head so hard in his wonderment that he knocked his own hat off.
     'Joe!' he called to another man - a labourer-  as  he picked it  up and
put it on again.
     'Joe it is!' said Joe.
     'Where's that young spark of Dombey's who's been watching the  shipment
of them goods?'
     'Just gone, by t'other gate,' said Joe.
     'Call him back a minute.'
     Joe ran up an archway, bawling as he went, and very soon returned
     with a blithe-looking boy.
     'You're Dombey's jockey, ain't you?' said the first man.
     'I'm in Dombey's House, Mr Clark,' returned the boy.
     'Look'ye here, then,' said Mr Clark.
     Obedient  to  the  indication  of  Mr Clark's hand, the  boy approached
towards Florence, wondering, as well  he might, what he had to  do with her.
But  she,  who had heard  what passed, and who, besides  the  relief  of  so
suddenly considering  herself  safe at  her  journey's  end,  felt reassured
beyond all measure by his lively youthful face and manner, ran eagerly up to
him, leaving one of the  slipshod shoes  upon the ground and caught his hand
in both of hers.
     'I am lost, if you please!' said Florence.
     'Lost!' cried the boy.
     'Yes, I was lost this morning, a long way from here - and I have had my
clothes taken away, since - and I am not dressed in my own now - and my name
is Florence Dombey, my  little brother's only sister  -  and, oh dear, dear,
take care of me, if  you please!' sobbed Florence,  giving full vent to  the
childish feelings she had so  long  suppressed, and bursti