ng into  tears. At
the same time her miserable  bonnet falling off, her hair came tumbling down
about her face: moving to  speechless  admiration and  commiseration,  young
Walter, nephew of Solomon Gills, Ships' Instrument-maker in general.
     Mr  Clark stood rapt in amazement: observing under his breath, I  never
saw such a start on this wharf before. Walter picked up the shoe, and put it
on the little foot as the Prince in the story might have fitted Cinderella's
slipper on. He  hung the  rabbit-skin over his left  arm; gave the right  to
Florence;  and  felt, not  to  say like Richard Whittington - that is a tame
comparison -  but like  Saint George of England, with the dragon lying  dead
before him.
     'Don't cry, Miss Dombey,' said Walter, in a transport of
     enthusiasm.
     'What a wonderful thing for me that I am  here! You are as safe now  as
if you  were guarded by a whole boat's crew of picked men from a man-of-war.
Oh, don't cry.'
     'I won't cry any more,' said Florence. 'I am only crying for joy.'
     'Crying for joy!' thought Walter, 'and I'm the cause of it! Come along,
Miss Dombey. There's the other shoe off now! Take mine, Miss Dombey.'
     'No, no, no,' said Florence, checking him in the act of impetuously
     pulling off his own. 'These do better. These do very well.'
     'Why, to be  sure,' said Walter, glancing at her foot, 'mine are a mile
too  large. What am I thinking about!  You never could walk  in  mine!  Come
along, Miss Dombey. Let me see the villain who will dare molest you now.'
     So Walter, looking  immensely fierce,  led off  Florence, looking  very
happy; and they went arm-in-arm  along the streets, perfectly indifferent to
any astonishment that their appearance might or did excite by the way.
     It was  growing  dark  and foggy,  and  beginning to rain too; but they
cared nothing for this: being both wholly absorbed in the late adventures of
Florence, which she related  with the  innocent good faith and confidence of
her years, while Walter listened  as if, far  from  the  mud and  grease  of
Thames Street,  they were rambling  alone  among the broad leaves  and  tall
trees of some desert island in the tropics - as  he very likely fancied, for
the time, they were.
     'Have we far to go?' asked Florence at last, lilting up her eyes to her
companion's face.
     'Ah! By-the-bye,' said Walter, stopping, 'let me see; where are we? Oh!
I know. But the offices are shut up now, Miss Dombey. There's  nobody there.
Mr Dombey has gone home long ago. I suppose we must go home  too?  or, stay.
Suppose  I take you to my Uncle's, where I live - it's very near here  - and
go to your house in a  coach to tell them you  are safe, and bring you  back
some clothes. Won't that be best?'
     'I think so,' answered Florence. 'Don't you? What do you think?'
     As  they  stood  deliberating  in  the  street, a man passed  them, who
glanced  quickly  at Walter  as he  went by,  as if he recognised  him;  but
seeming to correct that first impression, he passed on without stopping.
     'Why, I think it's  Mr Carker,' said Walter. 'Carker in  our House. Not
Carker our Manager, Miss Dombey - the other Carker;  the Junior - Halloa! Mr
Carker!'
     'Is  that  Walter  Gay?'  said  the other, stopping  and returning.  'I
couldn't believe it, with such a strange companion.
     As he stood near a lamp, listening with surprise  to  Walter's  hurried
explanation, he presented a  remarkable contrast to the two youthful figures
arm-in-arm before him. He was not old, but his hair was white; his  body was
bent,  or bowed as  if by the weight of  some great trouble:  and there were
deep  lines in his worn and  melancholy  face.  The  fire of his  eyes,  the
expression of  his features, the  very voice  in  which he spoke,  were  all
subdued and  quenched,  as  if the spirit  within him lay  in ashes.  He was
respectably, though very plainly dressed, in black; but his clothes, moulded
to  the  general  character of  his  figure,  seemed  to  shrink  and  abase
themselves upon  him,  and  to join in the sorrowful solicitation  which the
whole man from head to foot expressed,  to  be left  unnoticed, and alone in
his humility.
     And yet his interest in youth and hopefulness was not extinguished with
the other  embers of his  soul, for he watched the boy's earnest countenance
as  he  spoke with unusual  sympathy, though with  an  inexplicable  show of
trouble and compassion, which escaped into his looks, however hard he strove
to hold it prisoner. When Walter, in conclusion, put to him the question  he
had  put  to  Florence,  he still  stood  glancing  at  him  with  the  same
expression,  as  if  he  had  read some fate  upon his  face,  mournfully at
variance with its present brightness.
     'What do you advise, Mr Carker?' said Walter, smiling. 'You always give
me  good advice, you  know, when  you  do  speak  to  me. That's  not often,
though.'
     'I think your own idea is the best,' he answered: looking from Florence
to Walter, and back again.
     'Mr Carker,' said  Walter, brightening with a generous thought,  'Come!
Here's a chance for you. Go you to Mr Dombey's, and be the messenger of good
news. It may do you some good, Sir. I'll remain at home. You shall go.'
     'I!' returned the other.
     'Yes. Why not, Mr Carker?' said the boy.
     He merely shook  him by the  hand  in answer; he  seemed  in  a  manner
ashamed and afraid even to do that; and bidding him good-night, and advising
him to make haste, turned away.
     'Come, Miss Dombey,' said Walter, looking after him as they turned away
also,  'we'll  go  to my Uncle's as quick as we can. Did  you  ever  hear Mr
Dombey speak of Mr Carker the Junior, Miss Florence?'
     'No,' returned the child, mildly, 'I don't often hear Papa speak.'
     'Ah! true! more shame for him,' thought Walter. After a minute's pause,
during which he had been looking down  upon  the gentle patient  little face
moving on at his side, he said, 'The strangest man, Mr Carker the Junior is,
Miss  Florence,  that  ever you heard  of. If you could  understand  what an
extraordinary  interest he  takes in me, and yet how he  shuns me and avoids
me;  and  what  a  low place he  holds  in our  office,  and how he is never
advanced,  and  never complains, though year  after year  he  sees young men
passed over his  head, and  though his brother (younger than he is), is  our
head Manager, you would be as much puzzled about him as I am.'
     As  Florence could hardly  be expected  to  understand much  about  it,
Walter  bestirred  himself  with   his   accustomed   boyish  animation  and
restlessness to change the subject; and one of  the unfortunate shoes coming
off again opportunely, proposed  to  carry  Florence to his  uncle's in  his
arms. Florence, though very tired, laughingly declined the proposal, lest he
should let  her fall; and as they were  already near the  wooden Midshipman,
and as Walter went on to cite  various precedents, from shipwrecks and other
moving accidents, where younger boys  than  he had triumphantly rescued  and
carried off older girls than Florence, they were still in  full conversation
about it when they arrived at the Instrument-maker's door.
     'Holloa, Uncle Sol!' cried Walter, bursting into the shop, and speaking
incoherently and  out of breath,  from that time  forth, for the rest of the
evening. 'Here's a wonderful  adventure! Here's Mr Dombey's daughter lost in
the streets, and robbed of her clothes by an old witch of a woman - found by
me - brought home to our parlour to rest - look here!'
     'Good  Heaven!'  said Uncle  Sol,  starting back  against his favourite
compass-case. 'It can't be! Well, I - '
     'No, nor  anybody else,'  said Walter,  anticipating the  rest. 'Nobody
would, nobody could, you  know. Here! just help me lift the little sofa near
the fire, will  you, Uncle Sol - take  care of the plates  - cut some dinner
for her, will you, Uncle - throw those shoes under the grate.  Miss Florence
-  put  your feet  on  the  fender to  dry - how damp they are -  here's  an
adventure, Uncle, eh? - God bless my soul, how hot I am!'
     Solomon  Gills  was  quite  as  hot,  by  sympathy,  and  in  excessive
bewilderment. He patted Florence's head, pressed  her to eat, pressed her to
drink, rubbed the soles of her  feet  with his pocket-handkerchief heated at
the fire, followed his locomotive nephew with his eyes, and ears, and had no
clear perception of anything  except  that  he  was being constantly knocked
against and tumbled over by that excited young gentleman, as he darted about
the room attempting to  accomplish twenty things  at once, and doing nothing
at all.
     'Here, wait a minute, Uncle,' he continued, catching up a candle, 'till
I run upstairs,  and  get  another jacket on, and then I'll  be off. I  say,
Uncle, isn't this an adventure?'
     'My  dear boy,' said Solomon, who, with  his spectacles on his forehead
and the great chronometer in his pocket, was incessantly oscillating between
Florence on the sofa,  and his nephew in all parts of the parlour, 'it's the
most extraordinary - '
     'No,  but  do, Uncle, please -  do, Miss  Florence  - dinner, you know,
Uncle.'
     'Yes, yes, yes,' cried Solomon, cutting instantly into a leg of mutton,
as  if he were catering for a  giant.  'I'll take  care  of  her,  Wally!  I
understand. Pretty  dear! Famished, of course. You  go and  get ready.  Lord
bless me! Sir Richard Whittington thrice Lord Mayor of London.'
     Walter was not very long in mounting to his lofty garret and descending
from it,  but in the meantime Florence, overcome by fatigue, had sunk into a
doze before the fire. The short interval of quiet, though only a few minutes
in  duration,  enabled Solomon Gills so  far to collect his wits as to  make
some little  arrangements for her  comfort, and  to  darken the room, and to
screen  her  from the blaze. Thus, when  the boy returned, she  was sleeping
peacefully.
     'That's capital!'  he  whispered, giving Solomon such  a  hug  that  it
squeezed  a new expression  into his face. 'Now I'm off. I'll  just  take  a
crust of bread with  me, for I'm very  hungry -  and  don't wake  her, Uncle
Sol.'
     'No, no,' said Solomon. 'Pretty child.'
     'Pretty,  indeed!' cried  Walter. 'I  never saw such a face, Uncle Sol.
Now I'm off.'
     'That's right,' said Solomon, greatly relieved.
     'I say, Uncle Sol,' cried Walter, putting his face in at the door.
     'Here he is again,' said Solomon.
     'How does she look now?'
     'Quite happy,' said Solomon.
     'That's famous! now I'm off.'
     'I hope you are,' said Solomon to himself.
     'I say, Uncle Sol,' cried Walter, reappearing at the door.
     'Here he is again!' said Solomon.
     'We met Mr  Carker the Junior in the street, queerer than ever. He bade
me good-bye, but came behind us  here  - there's an odd thing! - for when we
reached the shop door, I looked round, and saw  him going quietly away, like
a servant who  had seen me  home, or a faithful dog.  How does she look now,
Uncle?'
     'Pretty much the same as before, Wally,' replied Uncle Sol.
     'That's right. Now I am off!'
     And  this  time he really  was: and Solomon Gills, with no appetite for
dinner,  sat on the opposite side  of  the fire,  watching  Florence in  her
slumber,   building  a  great  many  airy  castles  of  the  most  fantastic
architecture; and  looking,  in the dim shade, and  in the close vicinity of
all the instruments, like a magician disguised in a  Welsh wig and a suit of
coffee colour, who held the child in an enchanted sleep.
     In the meantime, Walter proceeded towards Mr Dombey's  house  at a pace
seldom achieved by a hack horse from the stand; and yet with his head out of
window  every  two  or  three  minutes,  in impatient remonstrance with  the
driver.  Arriving  at  his  journey's  end, he leaped  out, and breathlessly
announcing  his  errand  to the  servant,  followed  him straight  into  the
library, we there was a great confusion of tongues, and where Mr Dombey, his
sister, and Miss Tox, Richards, and Nipper, were all congregated together.
     'Oh! I beg your pardon, Sir,' said Walter, rushing up to him, 'but  I'm
happy to say it's all right, Sir. Miss Dombey's found!'
     The boy with his open face,  and  flowing  hair,  and  sparkling  eyes,
panting with pleasure and excitement, was wonderfully opposed to  Mr Dombey,
as he sat confronting him in his library chair.
     'I told you,  Louisa,  that  she would  certainly  be found,'  said  Mr
Dombey, looking slightly over his shoulder at that lady, who wept in company
with Miss Tox. 'Let the servants  know that no further steps are  necessary.
This boy who brings the information, is young Gay, from  the office. How was
my  daughter  found,  Sir?  I  know  how  she  was  lost.'  Here  he  looked
majestically at Richards. 'But how was she found? Who found her?'
     'Why, I believe  I found  Miss  Dombey, Sir,' said Walter modestly, 'at
least I don't know that  I can claim the merit of  having exactly found her,
Sir, but I was the fortunate instrument of - '
     'What do  you mean, Sir,'  interrupted  Mr Dombey, regarding the  boy's
evident  pride  and pleasure  in  his  share  of  the  transaction  with  an
instinctive dislike, 'by not having  exactly found my daughter, and by being
a fortunate instrument? Be plain and coherent, if you please.'
     It  was  quite out  of Walter's power  to be coherent; but he  rendered
himself as explanatory as he  could, in his breathless state, and stated why
he had come alone.
     'You hear this, girl?' said Mr Dombey sternly to the black-eyed.  'Take
what is necessary, and return immediately with this  young man to fetch Miss
Florence home. Gay, you will be rewarded to-morrow.
     'Oh!  thank you, Sir,' said Walter.  'You are very kind. I'm sure I was
not thinking of any reward, Sir.'
     'You  are a boy,'  said Mr Dombey, suddenly and  almost  fiercely; 'and
what you think of, or affect to think of, is of little consequence. You have
done well, Sir. Don't undo it. Louisa, please to give the lad some wine.'
     Mr Dombey's glance followed Walter Gay with sharp disfavour, as he left
the room  under the pilotage of Mrs Chick; and it may be that his mind's eye
followed  him with no greater relish,  as he rode back to his  Uncle's  with
Miss Susan Nipper.
     There they found that Florence, much refreshed by sleep, had dined, and
greatly  improved the  acquaintance of  Solomon Gills, with whom she was  on
terms of perfect confidence and ease. The black-eyed  (who had cried so much
that  she  might now  be called  the red-eyed,  and  who was very silent and
depressed) caught  her  in her arms  without  a  word  of  contradiction  or
reproach,  and made  a very  hysterical meeting of  it. Then  converting the
parlour, for  the nonce, into a private tiring  room,  she dressed her, with
great care, in proper clothes; and presently led her forth, as like a Dombey
as her natural disqualifications admitted of her being made.
     'Good-night!' said Florence, running up to Solomon. 'You have been very
good to me.
     Old Sol was quite delighted, and kissed her like her grand-father.
     'Good-night, Walter! Good-bye!' said Florence.
     'Good-bye!' said Walter, giving both his hands.
     'I'll  never forget you,'  pursued Florence.  'No! indeed I never will.
Good-bye, Walter!' In the innocence  of her grateful heart, the child lifted
up her face to his. Walter, bending down  his own, raised  it again, all red
and burning; and looked at Uncle Sol, quite sheepishly.
     'Where's  Walter?'  'Good-night,  Walter!'  'Good-bye, Walter!'  'Shake
hands once more, Walter!'  This was still Florence's cry, after she was shut
up with her  little maid, in the coach. And when the  coach  at length moved
off, Walter on the door-step  gaily  turned the waving of  her handkerchief,
while  the wooden Midshipman behind him seemed, like  himself,  intent  upon
that  coach  alone,  excluding  all  the  other  passing  coaches  from  his
observation.
     In good time Mr Dombey's mansion was gained again, and  again there was
a noise of tongues in the library. Again, too, the coach was ordered to wait
- 'for Mrs Richards,' one of Susan's fellow-servants ominously whispered, as
she passed with Florence.
     The entrance of  the lost child made a slight sensation, but not  much.
Mr Dombey, who  had never found  her, kissed her once upon the forehead, and
cautioned  her not  to run away again,  or  wander anywhere with treacherous
attendants. Mrs Chick stopped in her lamentations on the corruption of human
nature,  even when beckoned  to the paths of virtue by a Charitable Grinder;
and received her with a welcome something short of the reception due to none
but perfect Dombeys. Miss Tox  regulated her  feelings by the models  before
her. Richards, the  culprit Richards, alone  poured out her heart in  broken
words of welcome, and bowed herself over the little wandering head as if she
really loved it.
     'Ah, Richards!' said Mrs Chick, with a sigh.  'It would  have been much
more satisfactory to those who wish to think well of their fellow creatures,
and much  more  becoming in  you, if you had  shown some  proper feeling, in
time, for the little child that  is now going to  be prematurely deprived of
its natural nourishment.
     'Cut  off,' said  Miss  Tox, in a  plaintive whisper, 'from  one common
fountain!'
     'If it was ungrateful case,' said Mrs Chick,  solemnly, 'and I had your
reflections, Richards,  I should feel as if the Charitable  Grinders'  dress
would blight my child, and the education choke him.'
     For  the matter of that - but  Mrs  Chick didn't know it  - he had been
pretty well blighted by the dress already; and as to the education, even its
retributive effect might be produced in time, for it was a storm of sobs and
blows.
     'Louisa!'  said  Mr  Dombey.  'It  is  not  necessary to  prolong these
observations.  The woman  is  discharged and  paid. You  leave  this  house,
Richards,  for taking  my  son  - my  son,'  said  Mr  Dombey,  emphatically
repeating these two words, 'into haunts and into society which are not to be
thought of  without a shudder. As to the accident  which befel Miss Florence
this morning,  I regard that as, in  one great sense, a happy and  fortunate
circumstance; inasmuch as, but for that occurrence, I never could have known
- and from your own lips too - of what you had been guilty. I think, Louisa,
the other nurse, the young person,' here Miss Nipper sobbed aloud, 'being so
much younger, and necessarily  influenced by Paul's nurse,  may remain. Have
the  goodness  to direct that  this woman's coach is paid  to' -  Mr  Dombey
stopped and winced - 'to Staggs's Gardens.'
     Polly  moved towards the  door, with Florence holding to her dress, and
crying to her in the most pathetic manner not to go away. It was a dagger in
the haughty father's heart, an arrow in  his brain, to see how the flesh and
blood he could not disown clung to this obscure stranger, and he sitting by.
Not that he cared to whom his daughter turned, or from whom turned away. The
swift sharp agony struck  through him, as  he thought of what  his son might
do.
     His son  cried lustily  that night, at all events.  Sooth to  say, poor
Paul had better  reason for his  tears than sons of that age often have, for
he had  lost his second mother - his first, so far as he knew - by  a stroke
as sudden as that natural affliction which had darkened the beginning of his
life.  At the same blow, his  sister  too,  who  cried herself  to  sleep so
mournfully, had lost as good and true a friend. But that is quite beside the
question. Let us waste no words about it.

        CHAPTER 7.
     A Bird's-eye Glimpse of Miss Tox's Dwelling-place: also of the State of
Miss Tox's Affections

     Miss Tox inhabited a dark little house that had been squeezed, at  some
remote period of  English History, into  a fashionable  neighbourhood at the
west end of the town,  where it stood in  the shade like a  poor relation of
the  great  street  round the  corner,  coldly  looked  down upon by  mighty
mansions.  It was not exactly in a court, and it was not  exactly in a yard;
but it was in  the dullest of No-Thoroughfares, rendered anxious and haggard
by distant  double knocks. The  name  of this retirement, where  grass  grew
between the  chinks  in  the stone  pavement,  was  Princess's Place; and in
Princess's  Place  was  Princess's  Chapel,  with  a  tinkling  bell,  where
sometimes  as many as five-and-twenty people attended service  on a  Sunday.
The  Princess's Arms  was  also  there,  and  much  resorted to  by splendid
footmen. A sedan  chair  was  kept inside  the railing before the Princess's
Arms,  but  it  had never come out within  the  memory  of man;  and on fine
mornings, the top of every rail (there were eight-and-forty, as Miss Tox had
often counted) was decorated with a pewter-pot.
     There was another private house besides Miss Tox's in Princess's Place:
not to mention an immense Pair of gates, with an immense pair of lion-headed
knockers on them, which were never opened by any chance,  and  were supposed
to constitute a disused entrance to somebody's stables. Indeed, there  was a
smack  of  stabling in the air of  Princess's Place; and  Miss Tox's bedroom
(which  was  at  the  back) commanded a  vista of Mews, where  hostlers,  at
whatever sort of work engaged, were continually accompanying themselves with
effervescent  noises; and where the most  domestic and confidential garments
of coachmen  and  their  wives  and families,  usually hung,  like Macbeth's
banners, on the outward walls.'
     At this other private house in  Princess's Place, tenanted by a retired
butler who had married  a housekeeper,  apartments  were let Furnished, to a
single gentleman: to wit, a wooden-featured, blue-faced Major, with his eyes
starting  out of his  head, in  whom  Miss  Tox recognised, as  she  herself
expressed  it, 'something so truly military;' and between whom and  herself,
an occasional interchange  of newspapers  and pamphlets, and  such  Platonic
dalliance, was effected through the medium of a dark servant of the  Major's
who Miss Tox was quite content to classify as a 'native,' without connecting
him with any geographical idea whatever.
     Perhaps there never was a smaller entry and  staircase,  than the entry
and  staircase of  Miss Tox's  house. Perhaps, taken altogether, from top to
bottom, it  was  the  most  inconvenient  little  house in England, and  the
crookedest; but then, Miss Tox said, what a situation! There was very little
daylight to be got there in the winter: no sun at the best of times: air was
out of the question, and traffic was walled out. Still Miss Tox  said, think
of the situation! So said the blue-faced Major, whose eyes were starting out
of his head: who gloried in Princess's  Place: and who delighted to turn the
conversation  at his club, whenever he  could,  to something connected  with
some of the great people in the great street round the corner, that he might
have the satisfaction of saying they were his neighbours.
     In  short,  with Miss Tox and the  blue-faced Major,  it was enough for
Princess's Place - as with  a  very small fragment  of society, it is enough
for many a little hanger-on of another  sort -  to be well connected, and to
have genteel blood  in its veins. It  might  be  poor, mean, shabby, stupid,
dull. No  matter.  The  great  street  round  the  corner  trailed off  into
Princess's  Place;  and that  which  of  High Holborn would  have  become  a
choleric word, spoken of Princess's Place became flat blasphemy.
     The  dingy  tenement inhabited  by  Miss Tox  was  her own; having been
devised and bequeathed to her by the deceased  owner of the fishy eye in the
locket,  of whom a miniature portrait, with a powdered head  and  a pigtail,
balanced  the  kettle-holder on opposite sides of the parlour fireplace. The
greater  part of the furniture was of the powdered-head and pig-tail period:
comprising  a  plate-warmer,  always  languishing  and  sprawling  its  four
attenuated  bow  legs  in  somebody's  way;  and  an  obsolete  harpsichord,
illuminated round the maker's name with a painted garland  of sweet peas. In
any part  of the house,  visitors  were usually  cognizant  of  a prevailing
mustiness; and in warm weather Miss Tox had  been seen apparently writing in
sundry chinks and crevices  of the wainscoat with the the wrong end of a pen
dipped in spirits of turpentine.
     Although  Major Bagstock  had  arrived at  what  is  called  in  polite
literature, the grand meridian of life, and was proceeding  on  his  journey
downhill with hardly  any throat, and  a  very rigid  pair of jaw-bones, and
long-flapped  elephantine  ears, and his eyes and complexion in the state of
artificial excitement already  mentioned, he was mightily proud of awakening
an interest in  Miss Tox, and  tickled his vanity with the fiction that  she
was a splendid woman  who had  her  eye on  him. This he  had several  times
hinted at the club: in connexion with  little jocularities, of which old Joe
Bagstock,  old  Joey Bagstock,  old  J. Bagstock, old  Josh Bagstock,  or so
forth, was the perpetual theme: it being, as it were, the Major's stronghold
and donjon-keep of light humour, to be on the  most familiar terms with  his
own name.
     'Joey  B.,   Sir,'the  Major  would   say,  with   a  flourish  of  his
walking-stick,  'is worth a dozen  of you. If  you  had a  few  more  of the
Bagstock breed among you, Sir, you'd be none the worse for it. Old Joe, Sir,
needn't look far for a  wile  even now,  if he was on the look-out; but he's
hard-hearted, Sir,  is Joe  - he's tough, Sir,  tough,  and de-vilish  sly!'
After such  a declaration,  wheezing  sounds would be heard; and the Major's
blue  would  deepen  into  purple,  while  his  eyes  strained  and  started
convulsively.
     Notwithstanding  his  very liberal laudation of  himself, however,  the
Major  was selfish. It may be doubted whether there ever was a more entirely
selfish  person at  heart;  or at stomach  is perhaps  a better  expression,
seeing that  he was more decidedly endowed  with that latter organ than with
the former. He had no idea of being overlooked or slighted by anybody; least
of all, had he the  remotest comprehension of being overlooked  and slighted
by Miss Tox.
     And yet,  Miss Tox,  as it appeared, forgot him - gradually forgot him.
She began  to forget him soon after her discovery  of the Toodle family. She
continued to  forget  him  up to the time  of the christening. She  went  on
forgetting him with compound interest after that.  Something or somebody had
superseded him as a source of interest.
     'Good morning, Ma'am,'  said the Major,  meeting Miss Tox in Princess's
Place, some weeks after the changes chronicled in the last chapter.
     'Good morning, Sir,' said Miss Tox; very coldly.
     'Joe Bagstock,  Ma'am,' observed  the Major, with  his usual gallantry,
'has  not  had  the happiness  of  bowing  to  you  at  your window,  for  a
considerable  period. Joe has  been hardly used,  Ma'am.  His  sun has  been
behind a cloud.'
     Miss Tox inclined her head; but very coldly indeed.
     'Joe's  luminary has  been  out of town, Ma'am, perhaps,'  inquired the
Major.
     'I? out of town? oh no, I have not been out of town,' said Miss Tox. 'I
have  been much engaged lately. My time is nearly all devoted  to  some very
intimate friends.  I am afraid I have none to spare, even now. Good morning,
Sir!'
     As  Miss Tox, with her most  fascinating step and carriage, disappeared
from Princess's Place,  the Major stood looking after  her with a bluer face
than ever: muttering and growling some not at all complimentary remarks.
     'Why, damme, Sir,' said  the Major, rolling his lobster eyes round  and
round  Princess's  Place,  and apostrophizing its fragrant air, 'six  months
ago, the woman loved the ground Josh Bagstock walked on. What's  the meaning
of it?'
     The Major decided, after  some consideration, that  it  meant mantraps;
that it meant plotting and snaring; that Miss Tox was digging pitfalls. 'But
you won't catch Joe, Ma'am,' said the Major. 'He's  tough, Ma'am,  tough, is
J.B.  Tough,  and de-vilish  sly!' over which reflection he chuckled for the
rest of the day.
     But still, when that  day and  many  other days were  gone and past, it
seemed that Miss Tox took no heed whatever of the Major, and thought nothing
at all about him. She had been wont, once upon a time, to look out at one of
her  little dark  windows  by  accident, and  blushingly return  the Major's
greeting; but  now, she  never gave the Major a chance, and cared nothing at
all  whether he looked over  the way or not. Other  changes had come to pass
too. The Major, standing in  the  shade of his own apartment, could make out
that  an  air of greater smartness had recently come over Miss Tox's  house;
that a new cage with gilded wires  had been provided  for the ancient little
canary  bird; that  divers  ornaments, cut out  of  coloured card-boards and
paper, seemed to decorate  the chimney-piece and tables; that a plant or two
had suddenly sprung up in the windows; that Miss  Tox occasionally practised
on  the  harpsichord,  whose  garland  of  sweet peas  was  always displayed
ostentatiously, crowned with the Copenhagen and Bird Waltzes in a Music Book
of Miss Tox's own copying.
     Over and above all this, Miss Tox had long  been dressed with  uncommon
care and elegance in slight mourning. But this helped the  Major out  of his
difficulty; and  be determined within himself that she had come into a small
legacy, and grown proud.
     It was on the very  next day after he had eased his mind by arriving at
this  decision, that the Major, sitting  at his breakfast, saw an apparition
so  tremendous and  wonderful  in Miss Tox's little  drawing-room,  that  he
remained  for  some  time rooted to his  chair; then, rushing into the  next
room,  returned  with  a  double-barrelled  opera-glass,  through  which  he
surveyed it intently for some minutes.
     'It's a  Baby, Sir,' said the Major, shutting up the glass  again, 'for
fifty thousand pounds!'
     The  Major  couldn't forget it.  He could  do nothing  but whistle, and
stare to that extent, that his eyes, compared with what they now became, had
been in former  times quite cavernous and sunken. Day after day, two, three,
four times a week, this Baby reappeared.  The Major  continued  to stare and
whistle. To all other intents and purposes he was alone in Princess's Place.
Miss Tox had ceased to mind what he did. He might have been black as well as
blue, and it would have been of no consequence to her.
     The perseverance with which she walked out of Princess's Place to fetch
this baby and its nurse, and  walked back with  them, and walked  home  with
them again, and continually  mounted guard over them;  and the  perseverance
with which she  nursed it herself, and fed it, and played with it, and froze
its young  blood with airs upon the harpsichord, was extraordinary. At about
this same period too, she was seized with a passion for looking at a certain
bracelet;  also  with a passion for looking at the moon,  of which she would
take long observations from her chamber  window. But whatever she looked at;
sun,  moon,  stars,  or bracelet; she looked  no more at the  Major. And the
Major whistled, and  stared,  and wondered,  and dodged about  his room, and
could make nothing of it.
     'You'll quite  win my  brother Paul's heart, and that's the  truth,  my
dear,' said Mrs Chick, one day.
     Miss Tox turned pale.
     'He grows more like Paul every day,' said Mrs Chick.
     Miss Tox returned no other reply than by  taking the little Paul in her
arms, and making his cockade perfectly flat and limp with her caresses.
     'His mother, my dear,' said Miss Tox, 'whose acquaintance I was to have
made through you, does he at all resemble her?'
     'Not at all,' returned Louisa
     'She was - she was pretty, I believe?' faltered Miss Tox.
     'Why, poor dear  Fanny  was interesting,' said  Mrs  Chick, after  some
judicial consideration.  'Certainly  interesting. She  had  not that  air of
commanding superiority which one would somehow expect, almost as a matter of
course, to find in my brother's wife;  nor  had she that strength and vigour
of mind which such a man requires.'
     Miss Tox heaved a deep sigh.
     'But she was pleasing:' said Mrs Chick: 'extremely so. And she meant! -
oh, dear, how well poor Fanny meant!'
     'You Angel!' cried Miss Tox to little  Paul. 'You Picture  of your  own
Papa!'
     If  the Major  could have  known how  many  hopes  and ventures, what a
multitude of plans and speculations,  rested  on that  baby head; and  could
have seen them hovering, in all  their heterogeneous confusion and disorder,
round the puckered cap of the unconscious little  Paul; he might have stared
indeed. Then would he have recognised, among the crowd,  some  few ambitious
motes and beams belonging to Miss Tox; then would he perhaps have understood
the nature of that lady's faltering investment in the Dombey Firm.
     If  the  child  himself  could  have  awakened in the night,  and seen,
gathered about his cradle-curtains,  faint reflections  of  the dreams  that
other  people had of him,  they might have scared him, with good reason. But
he slumbered on,  alike unconscious of the kind  intentions of Miss Tox, the
wonder of the Major, the early sorrows of  his sister, and the stern visions
of his father; and innocent that any  spot of earth contained a Dombey  or a
Son.

        CHAPTER 8.
     Paul's Further Progress, Growth and Character

     Beneath the watching and attentive  eyes of Time - so far another Major
- Paul's slumbers gradually changed. More and more light broke in upon them;
distincter  and  distincter dreams  disturbed them; an accumulating crowd of
objects  and  impressions  swarmed  about  his  rest; and so he  passed from
babyhood to childhood, and became a talking, walking, wondering Dombey.
     On the  downfall and banishment of Richards, the nursery may be said to
have been put into commission:  as a Public Department is sometimes, when no
individual Atlas can  be  found to  support it The  Commissioners  were,  of
course, Mrs Chick and Miss  Tox: who devoted themselves to their duties with
such astonishing ardour that Major Bagstock had  every day some new reminder
of  his being forsaken, while Mr Chick, bereft of domestic supervision, cast
himself upon the gay world, dined at clubs and coffee-houses, smelt of smoke
on  three different  occasions, went  to the play by  himself, and in short,
loosened  (as  Mrs  Chick  once told  him)  every  social  bond,  and  moral
obligation.
     Yet,  in spite of  his early promise, all this vigilance and care could
not  make little Paul a  thriving boy. Naturally delicate, perhaps, he pined
and wasted  after the dismissal of his  nurse, and,  for a long time, seemed
but to wait  his opportunity of gliding through their hands, and seeking his
lost mother.  This dangerous  ground  in his  steeple-chase towards  manhood
passed, he still found it very rough riding, and was grievously beset by all
the obstacles in his course.  Every tooth was a  break-neck fence, and every
pimple in the measles a stone wall to him. He  was down in every  fit of the
hooping-cough, and  rolled upon and  crushed  by  a  whole  field  of  small
diseases, that came trooping on each other's heels to prevent his getting up
again. Some bird of prey got  into his throat instead of the thrush; and the
very chickens  turning ferocious - if they have  anything  to do  with  that
infant malady to which they lend their name - worried him like tiger-cats.
     The  chill  of Paul's christening  had  struck  home, perhaps  to  some
sensitive part of his  nature, which could not  recover  itself  in the cold
shade  of  his father; but he was an  unfortunate child from that  day.  Mrs
Wickam often said she never see a dear so put upon.
     Mrs Wickam was a waiter's wife  - which  would seem equivalent to being
any other man's widow - whose application for an  engagement in  Mr Dombey's
service  had  been  favourably   considered,  on  account  of  the  apparent
impossibility of her  having any  followers, or anyone to follow;  and  who,
from within a day or two of  Paul's sharp weaning, had  been engaged as  his
nurse.  Mrs Wickam was a meek woman, of a fair complexion, with her eyebrows
always elevated, and her head  always drooping; who was always ready to pity
herself, or to be pitied, or to pity anybody  else; and who had a surprising
natural gift of  viewing all subjects in  an utterly  forlorn  and  pitiable
light, and bringing dreadful precedents to bear upon them, and  deriving the
greatest consolation from the exercise of that talent.
     It  is  hardly necessary to observe, that no touch of this quality ever
reached  the  magnificent  knowledge  of  Mr  Dombey.  It  would  have  been
remarkable,  indeed, if any had;  when no one in  the house  -  not even Mrs
Chick  or Miss Tox -  dared  ever whisper to him that  there had, on any one
occasion, been the least  reason for uneasiness in reference to little Paul.
He had settled, within himself, that the child must necessarily pass through
a certain routine  of  minor maladies, and  that the sooner  he  did so  the
better. If he could have bought him off, or provided a substitute, as in the
case of an unlucky drawing  for the  militia, he would  have been glad to do
so, on  liberal terms. But as this was not feasible,  he merely wondered, in
his haughty-manner,  now and then, what  Nature meant by it;  and  comforted
himself with the reflection that there was another milestone passed upon the
road, and that the  great end of the journey lay so much the nearer. For the
feeling  uppermost  in  his  mind,  now  and  constantly  intensifying,  and
increasing in it as Paul grew older, was impatience. Impatience for the time
to come, when  his visions of their united consequence and grandeur would be
triumphantly realized.
     Some philosophers tell us that  selfishness  is at the root of our best
loves and affections.' Mr Dombey's young child was,  from the beginning,  so
distinctly important to him as a part of his own greatness, or (which is the
same thing) of the greatness of Dombey and Son, that there  is no doubt  his
parental  affection might  have  been  easily  traced, like  many  a  goodly
superstructure of fair fame, to a  very low foundation. But he loved his son
with  all the love  he had. If there were a warm place  in his frosty heart,
his son occupied it; if its  very hard surface could  receive the impression
of any  image, the image of  that  son was there;  though  not so much as an
infant, or as a boy,  but as a grown man -  the 'Son' of the Firm. Therefore
he was  impatient  to  advance  into  the  future, and  to  hurry  over  the
intervening passages of his history. Therefore he had  little or no anxiety'
about them, in spite of his love;  feeling as if the boy had a charmed life,
and must become the man with whom he held such constant communication in his
thoughts, and for whom he planned and projected, as for an existing reality,
every day.
     Thus  Paul  grew to be nearly  five years  old. He was  a pretty little
fellow; though there was something  wan and wistful in  his small face, that
gave  occasion to many  significant shakes of  Mrs  Wickam's head, and  many
long-drawn inspirations  of Mrs  Wickam's breath.  His temper gave  abundant
promise  of  being  imperious  in after-life;  and  he  had  as  hopeful  an
apprehension  of  his own  importance, and the rightful subservience of  all
other things and persons to it,  as heart  could desire. He was childish and
sportive enough  at  times, and not of a sullen disposition;  but  he had  a
strange, old-fashioned, thoughtful way, at  other times, of sitting brooding
in  his miniature  arm-chair, when he looked (and talked)  like one of those
terrible  little Beings in the  Fairy tales, who, at a hundred  and fifty or
two hundred years of age, fantastically represent the children for whom they
have been substituted. He would frequently  be stricken with this precocious
mood  upstairs in the  nursery; and would sometimes lapse  into it suddenly,
exclaiming that he was tired:  even while  playing with Florence, or driving
Miss Tox in single harness. But at no time did he fall into it so surely, as
when,  his little chair being  carried down  into his father's  room, he sat
there with him  after dinner, by the fire. They were  the strangest  pair at
such  a  time that ever firelight shone upon. Mr Dombey so erect and solemn,
gazing at the blare; his little image, with an old, old face,  peering  into
the red  perspective with  the fixed and rapt attention of a sage. Mr Dombey
entertaining  complicated  worldly  schemes  and  plans;  the  little  image
entertaining  Heaven knows  what  wild  fancies, half-formed  thoughts,  and
wandering  speculations. Mr Dombey  stiff  with starch  and  arrogance;  the
little image by inheritance,  and in unconscious imitation. The  two so very
much alike, and yet so monstrously contrasted.
     On one of  these occasions, when they had both been perfectly quiet for
a  long  time,  and  Mr  Dombey  only  knew  that  the  child  was awake  by
occasionally glancing at his eye, where the bright fire was sparkling like a
jewel, little Paul broke silence thus:
     'Papa! what's money?'
     The abrupt question had such immediate reference  to the  subject of Mr
Dombey's thoughts, that Mr Dombey was quite disconcerted.
     'What is money, Paul?' he answered. 'Money?'
     'Yes,' said  the child, laying his hands  upon the elbows of his little
chair, and turning the old face up towards Mr Dombey's; 'what is money?'
     Mr  Dombey was in a  difficulty.  He would have liked to give him  some
explanation  involving the terms circulating-medium,  currency, depreciation
of currency', paper, bullion, rates of exchange, value of precious metals in
the market, and so forth; but looking down at  the little chair, and  seeing
what a long way  down  it was, he answered: 'Gold,  and  silver, and copper.
Guineas, shillings, half-pence. You know what they are?'
     'Oh  yes, I know what they are,' said Paul. 'I don't mean that, Papa. I
mean what's money after all?'
     Heaven and Earth, how old his face was as he turned it up again towards
his father's!
     'What is money after all!' said Mr Dombey, backing his  chair a little,
that he might the better gaze  in sheer amazement at  the  presumptuous atom
that propounded such an inquiry.
     'I  mean, Papa, what can  it do?' returned Paul, folding his arms (they
were  hardly long enough to  fold), and looking at the fire, and up  at him,
and at the fire, and up at him again.
     Mr Dombey drew his  chair back to its  former  place, and patted him on
the head. 'You'll know better by-and-by, my man,' he said. 'Money, Paul, can
do anything.' He  took hold  of the little hand, and beat it  softly against
one of his own, as he said so.
     But  Paul  got his hand free as soon as he could; and rubbing it gently
to and fro on the elbow of his chair, as if his wit were in the palm, and he
were sharpening it - and looking at  the  fire again, as though the fire had
been his adviser and prompter - repeated, after a short pause:
     'Anything, Papa?'
     'Yes. Anything - almost,' said Mr Dombey.
     'Anything  means  everything,  don't  it,  Papa?' asked  his  son:  not
observing, or possibly not understanding, the qualification.
     'It includes it: yes,' said Mr Dombey.
     'Why  didn't money  save  me  my Mama?' returned the  child.  'It isn't
cruel, is it?'
     'Cruel!' said Mr Dombey, settling his neckcloth, and seeming to  resent
the idea. 'No. A good thing can't be cruel.'
     'If it's a good  thing, and can do  anything,'  said the little fellow,
thoughtfully, as he looked back at the fire, 'I wonder why it didn't save me
my Mama.'
     He didn't ask  the question  of  his father this time.  Perhaps he  had
seen,  with  a  child's  quickness,  that it  had  already made  his  father
uncomfortable. But he repeated the thought aloud, as if it were quite an old
one to him, and had troubled him very much; and sat with his chin resting on
his hand, still cogitating and looking for an explanation in the fire.
     Mr Dombey having recovered from his surprise, not to say his alarm (for
it  was the very  first occasion on which  the child  had  ever broached the
subject of his mother to  him, though he had had him sitting by his side, in
this same manner,  evening after evening), expounded  to him how that money,
though a very potent spirit, never to be disparaged on any account whatever,
could not keep people alive whose time was come to die; and how that we must
all die, unfortunately, even in the  City, though we were never so rich. But
how that  money caused us to be  honoured, feared, respected,  courted,  and
admired, and made us  powerful and glorious in the eyes  of all men; and how
that  it could,  very often, even keep off death,  for a long time together.
How, for  example, it had secured to his Mama the services of Mr Pilkins, by
which  be, Paul, had often  profited  himself; likewise  of the great Doctor
Parker Peps, whom he had never known. And how it could do all, that could be
done. This, with more to the same purpose, Mr Dombey instilled into the mind
of his son,  who listened attentively, and seemed to understand the  greater
part of what was said to him.
     'It can't make me strong and quite  well, either,  Papa; can it?' asked
Paul, after a short silence; rubbing his tiny hands.
     'Why, you are  strong and  quite well,'  returned  Mr Dombey. 'Are  you
not?'
     Oh!  the  age of the face that was turned up again, with an expression,
half of melancholy, half of slyness, on it!
     'You are  as strong  and well as  such little  people usually are? Eh?'
said Mr Dombey.
     'Florence  is older  than  I am,  but I'm not  as  strong and  well  as
Florence, 'I know,' returned  the  child; 'and I  believe that when Florence
was as little as me, she could play a great deal  longer  at  a time without
tiring herself.  I  am  so tired sometimes,'  said little Paul,  warming his
hands, and looking  in between the bars of  the  grate, as  if some  ghostly
puppet-show were performing there,  'and my bones ache  so (Wickam says it's
my bones), that I don't know what to do.'
     'Ay! But that's at night,' said Mr Dombey, drawing his own chair closer
to his son's, and laying his  hand gently on his back; 'little people should
be tired at night, for then they sleep well.'
     'Oh, it's  not at night, Papa,' returned  the child, 'it's in the  day;
and I lie down in  Florence's lap, and she sings  to  me. At night  I  dream
about such cu-ri-ous things!'
     And he went on, warming his hands again, and thinking about  them, like
an old man or a young goblin.
     Mr Dombey was so astonished, and so uncomfortable,  and so perfectly at
a loss how to pursue the conversation, that he could only sit looking at his
son by the light  of the fire, with his  hand resting on his  back, as if it
were detained there  by some magnetic attraction. Once he advanced his other
hand, and turned the contemplative face towards his own for a moment. But it
sought the fire again  as soon  as  he released it; and remained,  addressed
towards the flickering blaze,  until  the  nurse appeared, to summon him  to
bed.
     'I want Florence to come for me,' said Paul.
     'Won't you come  with your poor Nurse Wickam,  Master  Paul?'  inquired
that attendant, with great pathos.
     'No, I won't,' replied Paul, composing himself in his  arm-chair again,
like the master of the house.
     Invoking  a  blessing  upon his  innocence, Mrs  Wickam  withdrew,  and
presently Florence  appeared in her  stead. The child immediately started up
with  sudden  readiness  and  animation, and  raised towards his  father  in
bidding him good-night, a countenance so much brighter, so much younger, and
so much more child-like  altogether, that Mr Dombey, while  he  felt greatly
reassured by the change, was quite amazed at it.
     After they had left the room together, he thought he heard a soft voice
singing; and remembering that  Paul had said his sister sung to him,  he had
the curiosity to  open the door and listen,  and  look  after them.  She was
toiling up the great, wide, vacant staircase, with him in her arms; his head
was lying  on  her shoulder,  one of his arms  thrown negligently round  her
neck. So they  went, toiling up; she singing all the way, and Paul sometimes
crooning out a feeble accompaniment. Mr  Dombey looked after them until they
reached the top of the staircase - not without halting  to rest by the way -
and passed out  of his sight; and then he still stood  gazing upwards, until
the dull rays of the moon, glimmering in a melancholy manner through the dim
skylight, sent him back to his room.
     Mrs Chick and Miss Tox were convoked in council at dinner next day; and
when the cloth was removed, Mr Dombey opened the proceedings by requiring to
be informed, without any gloss  or reservation,  whether there was  anything
the matter with Paul, and what Mr Pilkins said about him.
     'For the child is hardly,' said Mr Dombey, 'as stout as I could wish.'
     'My   dear   Paul,'  returned  Mrs   Chick,  'with  your  usual   happy
discrimination, which I am weak enough to envy you, every time I  am in your
company; and so I think is Miss Tox
     'Oh  my  dear!' said  Miss  Tox,  softly, 'how could  it  be otherwise?
Presumptuous as it is to aspire to such a level; still, if the bird of night
may - but I'll not trouble Mr Dombey with the sentiment. It  merely  relates
to the Bulbul.'
     Mr Dombey bent  his  head in  stately recognition of  the Bulbuls as an
old-established body.
     'With  your  usual  happy  discrimination, my dear  Paul,'  resumed Mrs
Chick, 'you have hit the  point at once. Our darling  is altogether as stout
as we  could  wish. The fact is, that his mind is too much for him. His soul
is a great deal too large for his frame.  I  am sure the  way  in which that
dear child talks!'said Mrs Chick, shaking her head; 'no  one  would believe.
His expressions, Lucretia, only yesterday upon the subject of Funerals!
     'I am afraid,' said  Mr Dombey, interrupting her testily, 'that some of
those  persons upstairs  suggest improper  subjects  to the  child.  He  was
speaking to me last night about his  -  about his  Bones,' said  Mr  Dombey,
laying an irritated stress upon the word.  'What on earth has anybody  to do
with  the -  with the  -  Bones of my son?  He is not a  living  skeleton, I
suppose.
     'Very far from it,' said Mrs Chick, with unspeakable expression.
     'I hope so,'  returned her  brother. 'Funerals again! who talks to  the
child  of funerals? We  are not undertakers, or mutes,  or grave-diggers,  I
believe.'
     'Very  far  from it,'  interposed  Mrs Chick,  with the  same  profound
expression as before.
     'Then  who puts such  things into his head?' said Mr  Dombey. 'Really I
was  quite dismayed and shocked last night. Who  puts such things  into  his
head, Louisa?'
     'My dear Paul,' said Mrs Chick, after a moment's silence,  'it is of no
use inquiring. I do not think,  I will  tell  you candidly that Wickam is  a
person of very cheerful spirit, or what one would call a - '
     'A daughter of Momus,' Miss Tox softly suggested.
     'Exactly  so,' said  Mrs Chick;  'but she is exceedingly attentive  and
useful, and not at  all  presumptuous;  indeed I never saw  a  more biddable
woman. I would say that for her, if I was put  upon  my trial before a Court
of Justice.'
     'Well!  you are  not put upon your trial before a Court  of Justice, at
present,  Louisa,'  returned Mr  Dombey, chafing,' and  therefore  it  don't
matter.
     'My dear Paul,' said Mrs Chick, in  a warning voice, 'I must  be spoken
to kindly, or there is an end of me,' at the same time a premonitory redness
developed itself in  Mrs  Chick's  eyelids which was  an  invariable sign of
rain, unless the weather changed directly.
     'I was inquiring, Louisa,' observed Mr Dombey, in an altered voice, and
after a decent interval, 'about Paul's health and actual state.
     'If the dear child,' said Mrs Chick, in the tone of one who was summing
up what had been previously quite agreed upon, instead of saying it all  for
the first  time, 'is a little weakened by that last  attack,  and  is not in
quite such  vigorous health as we could wish;  and if he has  some temporary
weakness  in his system, and does  occasionally  seem about to lose, for the
moment, the use of his - '
     Mrs Chick was afraid to say  limbs, after Mr Dombey's  recent objection
to  bones, and therefore waited for a suggestion from Miss Tox, who, true to
her office, hazarded 'members.'
     'Members!' repeated Mr Dombey.
     'I think the  medical gentleman  mentioned legs this  morning, my  dear
Louisa, did he not?' said Miss Tox.
     'Why,  of  course  he  did,  my  love,'  retorted  Mrs  Chick,   mildly
reproachful. 'How can you ask  me?  You heard him.  I say,  if our dear Paul
should lose,  for the moment,  the  use of his  legs, these  are  casualties
common to many children at his time of  life, and not to be prevented by any
care or caution. The sooner you  understand that,  Paul, and admit that, the
better. If you  have any  doubt as to the  amount of care, and  caution, and
affection, and self-sacrifice, that has  been  bestowed upon  little Paul, I
should wish  to refer the question to  your medical attendant,  or to any of
your dependants  in this house. Call Towlinson,' said  Mrs Chick, 'I believe
he has no prejudice in our favour; quite the contrary. I should wish to hear
what accusation Towlinson can make!'
     'Surely you  must  know, Louisa,'  observed Mr  Dombey,  'that  I don't
question your natural  devotion to,  and regard for, the future  head of  my
house.'
     'I am glad to hear it, Paul,' said Mrs Chick; 'but  really you are very
odd, and sometimes  talk very  strangely, though without meaning it, I know.
If your  dear boy's soul is too much for his body, Paul, you should remember
whose fault that is - who he  takes after, I mean - and make the best of it.
He's as like his Papa as he can be. People have  noticed  it in the streets.
The  very  beadle,  I am  informed,  observed  it,  so  long  ago  as at his
christening. He's a very respectable man, with children of his own. He ought
to know.'
     'Mr Pilkins saw Paul this morning, I believe?' said Mr Dombey.
     'Yes, he did,' returned his sister. 'Miss Tox  and myself were present.
Miss Tox and myself are always present.  We make  a point of it.  Mr Pilkins
has seen him for some days  past, and a very clever man I believe him to be.
He says  it is nothing  to  speak of;  which I can confirm, if  that is  any
consolation;  but he recommended, to-day, sea-air. Very wisely, Paul, I feel
convinced.'
     'Sea-air,' repeated Mr Dombey, looking at his sister.
     'There  is  nothing to  be made uneasy by, in that,'said Mrs Chick. 'My
George and Frederick were  both ordered  sea-air, when  they were about  his
age; and I have been ordered  it myself a  great  many  times. I quite agree
with you, Paul, that  perhaps topics may be incautiously mentioned  upstairs
before him, which it would be as well for his  little mind  not to expatiate
upon; but I really don't  see how that is  to be  helped,  in the case of  a
child of his quickness. If he were a common child, there would be nothing in
it. I must say I think, with Miss Tox, that a short absence from this house,
the  air of Brighton,  and the bodily and mental training of so judicious  a
person as Mrs Pipchin for instance - '
     'Who is Mrs Pipchin,  Louisa?' asked Mr Dombey; aghast at this familiar
introduction of a name he had never heard before.
     'Mrs Pipchin, my dear Paul,' returned his sister, 'is an elderly lady -
Miss Tox  knows her whole  history - who  has  for some time devoted all the
energies of her mind, with the greatest success, to the study  and treatment
of infancy, and who has been extremely well connected. Her husband broke his
heart in - how  did you say her husband broke  his heart, my dear? I  forget
the precise circumstances.
     'In pumping water out of the Peruvian Mines,' replied Miss Tox.
     'Not  being a Pumper himself, of course,' said Mrs  Chick,  glancing at
her brother; and  it really did seem necessary to offer the explanation, for
Miss Tox  had spoken of him as if  he had  died at the  handle;  'but having
invested  money  in  the  speculation,  which failed.  I  believe  that  Mrs
Pipchin's  management  of  children is  quite  astonishing. I have heard  it
commended in private circles ever  since  I was  -  dear me - how high!' Mrs
Chick's eye wandered about the bookcase near the  bust of Mr Pitt, which was
about ten feet from the ground.
     'Perhaps I should say of Mrs Pipchin,  my dear Sir,' observed Miss Tox,
with an  ingenuous blush,  'having  been so pointedly referred to, that  the
encomium  which has  been  passed upon  her  by  your  sweet sister is  well
merited.  Many ladies  and gentleman, now grown up to be interesting members
of society,  have  been  indebted  to her  care.  The humble  individual who
addresses you was  once under her charge. I believe juvenile nobility itself
is no stranger to her establishment.'
     'Do I  understand that this respectable matron keeps an  establishment,
Miss Tox?' the Mr Dombey, condescendingly.
     'Why, I really don't know,' rejoined that lady, 'whether I am justified
in calling  it so.  It is not a Preparatory School by  any means.  Should  I
express my meaning,' said Miss Tox, with peculiar sweetness,'if I designated
it an infantine Boarding-House of a very select description?'
     'On an exceedingly limited and particular scale,' suggested Mrs  Chick,
with a glance at her brother.
     'Oh! Exclusion itself!' said Miss Tox.
     There was something in this. Mrs  Pipchin's  husband having broken  his
heart  of the Peruvian mines  was good. It had  a  rich sound.  Besides,  Mr
Dombey was in a state almost amounting to consternation at  the idea of Paul
remaining  where he was one hour  after his removal  had been recommended by
the  medical  practitioner. It was  a  stoppage and delay upon the  road the
child must traverse, slowly at the best, before the goal was reached.  Their
recommendation  of Mrs Pipchin  had great weight with him;  for he knew that
they  were jealous of any interference with their charge, and he never for a
moment took  it  into account that  they might be  solicitous  to  divide  a
responsibility, of which he had,  as  shown  just now,  his own  established
views. Broke  his heart of the Peruvian mines, mused Mr Dombey. Well! a very
respectable way of doing It.
     'Supposing we should decide, on to-morrow's  inquiries,  to  send  Paul
down  to Brighton to this  lady, who would go with him?' inquired Mr Dombey,
after some reflection.
     'I don't think you  could send  the  child anywhere  at present without
Florence, my  dear  Paul,' returned  his sister,  hesitating. 'It's quite an
infatuation with him. He's very young, you know, and has his fancies.'
     Mr Dombey turned  his head away,  and going slowly to the bookcase, and
unlocking it, brought back a book to read.
     'Anybody else, Louisa?' he said, without looking  up, and  turning over
the leaves.
     'Wickam, of  course.  Wickam  would be quite sufficient, I should say,'
returned his  sister. 'Paul being in such hands as Mrs Pipchin's, you  could
hardly send anybody who would be a further check upon her. You would go down
yourself once a week at least, of course.'
     'Of  course,' said  Mr Dombey; and sat looking at one  page for an hour
afterwards, without reading one word.
     This   celebrated   Mrs   Pipchin   was  a   marvellous   ill-favoured,
ill-conditioned  old  lady, of a stooping figure, with a  mottled face, like
bad marble, a hook  nose, and a  hard grey eye, that  looked  as if it might
have been hammered at on an anvil without sustaining any injury. Forty years
at  least had  elapsed  since the Peruvian mines  had been  the death  of Mr
Pipchin; but his relict still wore black  bombazeen,  of such  a lustreless,
deep, dead, sombre shade, that gas itself couldn't light her up  after dark,
and her presence was a quencher to any number of candles. She  was generally
spoken of as 'a great manager' of children; and the secret of her management
was,  to give  them  everything that they didn't like, and nothing that they
did - which was found to sweeten their dispositions very much.  She was such
a bitter old lady, that  one was  tempted to  believe there  had  been  some
mistake  in the application  of  the  Peruvian machinery,  and that  all her
waters of gladness and  milk of human kindness,  had been  pumped  out  dry,
instead of the mines.
     The Castle of this ogress and child-queller was in a steep by-street at
Brighton; where the soil was more than usually chalky, flinty, and  sterile,
and the houses were more  than usually  brittle  and  thin; where  the small
front-gardens had  the  unaccountable  property  of  producing  nothing  but
marigolds,  whatever  was  sown in  them; and where  snails  were constantly
discovered holding on to the street doors, and other public places they were
not  expected to  ornament, with  the tenacity of  cupping-glasses.  In  the
winter time the air couldn't  be got  out of the  Castle,  and in the summer
time it couldn't be got in. There was such a continual reverberation of wind
in  it,  that  it sounded  like a great  shell, which  the  inhabitants were
obliged to hold to their ears night and day, whether they liked it or no. It
was  not, naturally, a fresh-smelling house; and in the window of the  front
parlour, which was never opened, Mrs Pipchin  kept a collection of plants in
pots,  which  imparted an earthy flavour of their  own to the establishment.
However choice  examples of  their kind, too, these  plants  were  of a kind
peculiarly  adapted  to  the   embowerment  of  Mrs  Pipchin.   There   were
half-a-dozen  specimens of the  cactus,  writhing  round  bits of lath, like
hairy serpents; another  specimen  shooting out broad  claws, like  a  green
lobster;  several  creeping  vegetables,  possessed of  sticky and  adhesive
leaves;  and  one  uncomfortable  flower-pot  hanging to  the ceiling, which
appeared  to have  boiled over, and tickling people underneath with its long
green ends, reminded them of  spiders - in which Mrs  Pipchin's dwelling was
uncommonly  prolific, though perhaps it  challenged competition  still  more
proudly, in the season, in point of earwigs.
     Mrs Pipchin's scale of charges  being  high, however, to all who  could
afford to pay, and Mrs Pipchin very seldom sweetening the equable acidity of
her nature  in  favour  of  anybody,  she  was held  to be an  old  'lady of
remarkable  firmness, who was  quite  scientific  in  her  knowledge of  the
childish  character.' On  this reputation, and  on the  broken  heart of  Mr
Pipchin,  she  had contrived, taking  one  year  with another, to eke out  a
tolerable sufficient living since  her husband's demise.  Within  three days
after  Mrs Chick's  first allusion  to her, this excellent old lady  had the
satisfaction of  anticipating a handsome  addition to her current  receipts,
from the  pocket  of Mr Dombey;  and  of  receiving Florence and her  little
brother Paul, as inmates of the Castle.
     Mrs Chick and Miss Tox, who had brought them down on the previous night
(which they all passed at an Hotel), had just driven away from  the door, on
their journey home again; and Mrs Pipchin, with her back to the fire, stood,
reviewing  the  new-comers,  like an  old soldier. Mrs Pipchin's middle-aged
niece,  her good-natured and  devoted slave,  but  possessing  a  gaunt  and
iron-bound aspect, and much afflicted with boils on her nose,  was divesting
Master Bitherstone of the clean collar he had worn on parade.  Miss  Pankey,
the only other little boarder at present, had that moment been walked off to
the Castle Dungeon (an empty apartment at the back, devoted to  correctional
purposes), for having sniffed thrice, in the presence of visitors.
     'Well, Sir,' said Mrs Pipchin to Paul, 'how do you think you shall like
me?'
     'I don't think I shall like you at  all,'  replied Paul. 'I want  to go
away. This isn't my house.'
     'No. It's mine,' retorted Mrs Pipchin.
     'It's a very nasty one,' said Paul.
     'There's a worse  place  in it than  this  though,'  said Mrs  Pipchin,
'where we shut up our bad boys.'
     'Has he ever been in it?' asked Paul: pointing out Master Bitherstone.
     Mrs  Pipchin  nodded assent; and Paul had enough to do, for the rest of
that  day,  in surveying Master Bitherstone from head to  foot, and watching
all the workings of his countenance, with the interest attaching to a boy of
mysterious and terrible experiences.
     At one o'clock  there  was  a dinner,  chiefly  of the farinaceous  and
vegetable kind, when Miss Pankey (a mild little blue-eyed morsel of a child,
who  was shampoo'd every morning, and seemed in danger of being rubbed away,
altogether) was led in from captivity by the ogress herself,  and instructed
that nobody who sniffed before visitors ever went to Heaven. When this great
truth had been thoroughly impressed upon her, she was regaled with rice; and
subsequently repeated  the form of grace established in the Castle, in which
there was  a special  clause,  thanking Mrs  Pipchin  for a good dinner. Mrs
Pipchin's niece,  Berinthia, took cold pork. Mrs Pipchin, whose constitution
required warm nourishment, made a special repast of mutton-chops, which were
brought in hot and hot, between two plates, and smelt very nice.
     As it  rained  after  dinner, and they  couldn't  go out walking on the
beach, and Mrs Pipchin's  constitution required rest after  chops, they went
away with  Berry (otherwise Berinthia) to the Dungeon; an empty room looking
out upon  a  chalk wall and  a  water-butt,  and made  ghastly  by a  ragged
fireplace without  any stove in it. Enlivened by company, however,  this was
the best place after all; for  Berry  played with them there,  and seemed to
enjoy  a  game at romps  as much as  they  did;  until  Mrs Pipchin knocking
angrily  at the wall, like the Cock Lane Ghost' revived, they  left off, and
Berry told them stories in a whisper until twilight.
     For  tea there was plenty of milk and water, and bread and butter, with
a little  black  tea-pot  for  Mrs  Pipchin  and Berry,  and buttered  toast
unlimited  for  Mrs Pipchin, which  was brought  in, hot and  hot,  like the
chops.  Though  Mrs Pipchin got  very  greasy,  outside, over  this dish, it
didn't seem to  lubricate her internally, at all; for  she  was as fierce as
ever, and the hard grey eye knew no softening.
     After tea, Berry brought out a little work-box, with the Royal Pavilion
on the lid, and fell to working busily; while Mrs Pipchin, having put on her
spectacles and opened a great volume bound in green baize, began to nod. And
whenever Mrs Pipchin caught herself falling forward into  the fire, and woke
up, she filliped Master Bitherstone on the nose for nodding too.
     At last  it was the children's  bedtime, and after prayers they went to
bed. As little Miss Pankey  was afraid  of  sleeping alone in the  dark, Mrs
Pipchin always made a point of driving her  upstairs herself, like  a sheep;
and  it  was cheerful to hear  Miss Pankey  moaning long  afterwards, in the
least eligible chamber, and Mrs  Pipchin now and then going in to shake her.
At  about  half-past  nine  o'clock the  odour of  a  warm sweet-bread  (Mrs
Pipchin's constitution wouldn't go to sleep without sweet-bread) diversified
the prevailing fragrance of the house, which Mrs Wickam said was 'a smell of
building;' and slumber fell upon the Castle shortly after.
     The breakfast next morning was like the tea over night, except that Mrs
Pipchin took her roll instead of toast,  and seemed a little more irate when
it  was  over. Master Bitherstone  read aloud to  the rest a  pedigree  from
Genesis judiciously selected by Mrs Pipchin),  getting  over  the names with
the  ease  and  clearness of a person tumbling  up the treadmill. That done,
Miss Pankey was borne away to be  shampoo'd; and Master Bitherstone to  have
something  else done to him  with  salt water, from which he always returned
very blue and  dejected. Paul and Florence went out in  the  meantime on the
beach  with Wickam - who was constantly in  tears  - and at about  noon  Mrs
Pipchin presided over some Early Readings.  It being a part of Mrs Pipchin's
system not to encourage a  child's mind to develop and expand  itself like a
young flower, but  to open it by force like  an  oyster, the moral of  these
lessons was usually  of  a violent  and  stunning  character:  the hero -  a
naughty  boy  -  seldom,  in  the  mildest  catastrophe, being  finished off
anything less than a lion, or a bear.
     Such  was life at Mrs Pipchin's. On Saturday Mr  Dombey  came down; and
Florence and Paul would go to his Hotel, and have tea They passed the  whole
of  Sunday  with him, and  generally rode out  before dinner;  and on  these
occasions  Mr Dombey seemed to grow, like Falstaff's assailants, and instead
of being one man in buckram, to  become a dozen. Sunday evening was the most
melancholy evening in the week; for Mrs Pipchin always made a point of being
particularly cross on Sunday nights. Miss Pankey was generally  brought back
from an aunt's at  Rottingdean,  in deep  distress; and Master  Bitherstone,
whose relatives  were all in India, and who was required to sit, between the
services,  in an  erect  position with  his head  against the  parlour wall,
neither moving hand nor  foot, suffered so acutely in his young spirits that
he once asked Florence, on a Sunday night, if she could give him any idea of
the way back to Bengal.
     But  it was generally said that  Mrs Pipchin was a woman of system with
children; and  no doubt she  was. Certainly  the wild  ones went  home  tame
enough, after  sojourning for a  few months beneath  her hospitable roof. It
was  generally said, too,  that it was highly  creditable of Mrs  Pipchin to
have devoted herself to this way of life, and to have  made such a sacrifice
of her  feelings, and such a  resolute stand against her  troubles,  when Mr
Pipchin broke his heart in the Peruvian mines.
     At  this exemplary  old  lady, Paul would  sit  staring  in  his little
arm-chair by the fire, for any length of  time. He never seemed to know what
weariness was, when he  was looking fixedly  at Mrs Pipchin. He was not fond
of  her; he was not afraid of  her; but in those old, old moods of his,  she
seemed to have a grotesque attraction for him. There  he would sit,  looking
at her, and warming his hands, and looking  at her, until he sometimes quite
confounded  Mrs  Pipchin, Ogress  as she  was. Once she asked him, when they
were alone, what he was thinking about.
     'You,' said Paul, without the least reserve.
     'And what are you thinking about me?' asked Mrs Pipchin.
     'I'm thinking how old you must be,' said Paul.
     'You mustn't say such things  as that,  young  gentleman,' returned the
dame. 'That'll never do.'
     'Why not?' asked Paul.
     'Because it's not polite,' said Mrs Pipchin, snappishly.
     'Not polite?' said Paul.
     'No.'
     'It's not  polite,' said Paul, innocently, 'to eat all the mutton chops
and toast, Wickam says.
     'Wickam,'  retorted  Mrs  Pipchin,  colouring, 'is a wicked,  impudent,
bold-faced hussy.'
     'What's that?' inquired Paul.
     'Never you mind, Sir,' retorted Mrs Pipchin. 'Remember the story of the
little boy that was gored to death by a mad bull for asking questions.'
     'If  the bull  was mad,' said Paul, 'how did he  know  that the boy had
asked questions?  Nobody  can go  and whisper secrets to a mad bull. I don't
believe that story.
     'You don't believe it, Sir?' repeated Mrs Pipchin, amazed.
     'No,' said Paul.
     'Not if it should happen to have been a tame bull, you little Infidel?'
said Mrs Pipchin.
     As Paul had not  considered the subject  in that light, and had founded
his conclusions on the alleged lunacy of the bull, he allowed  himself to be
put  down for the present. But he sat turning it over in his mind, with such
an obvious intention of fixing Mrs Pipchin  presently,  that even that hardy
old lady deemed it prudent  to retreat until  he  should have forgotten  the
subject.
     From that time, Mrs Pipchin appeared to  have something of the same odd
kind of attraction towards Paul, as Paul had towards her. She would make him
move his  chair to her side  of the fire, instead  of sitting  opposite; and
there he would remain in a nook between Mrs Pipchin and the fender, with all
the  light  of his little  face absorbed into  the black bombazeen  drapery,
studying every line and wrinkle of her countenance, and peering at the  hard
grey  eye, until Mrs Pipchin was sometimes  fain to shut it, on pretence  of
dozing. Mrs Pipchin had an old black cat, who generally lay  coiled upon the
centre foot  of the  fender, purring egotistically,  and winking at the fire
until the contracted pupils  of his  eyes were like two notes of admiration.
The good old lady might have been  -  not  to record  it disrespectfully - a
witch, and  Paul and the cat her two familiars, as they  all sat by the fire
together.  It  would  have been quite in keeping with the  appearance of the
party if they had all sprung up the  chimney in  a  high wind one night, and
never been heard of any more.
     This, however, never came to pass. The cat,  and Paul, and Mrs Pipchin,
were  constantly to  be found in  their usual places after dark;  and  Paul,
eschewing  the  companionship of  Master Bitherstone, went  on  studying Mrs
Pipchin, and  the cat, and the fire,  night  after night, as if they  were a
book of necromancy, in three volumes.
     Mrs Wickam put her own construction on Paul's eccentricities; and being
confirmed in her low spirits by  a perplexed view of chimneys from the  room
where she  was accustomed to sit, and  by the noise of the wind, and  by the
general dulness  (gashliness was Mrs  Wickam's  strong  expression)  of  her
present  life,  deduced  the  most  dismal reflections  from  the  foregoing
premises.  It was a part of  Mrs Pipchin's  policy to prevent her own 'young
hussy' - that was  Mrs Pipchin's  generic  name  for  female  servant - from
communicating with Mrs Wickam: to which end she devoted much of her time  to
concealing herself behind doors,  and springing  out on that devoted maiden,
whenever she  made an approach towards Mrs Wickam's apartment. But Berry was
free to hold what converse she could in that quarter,  consistently with the
discharge of the  multifarious duties  at  which she toiled incessantly from
morning to night; and to Berry Mrs Wickam unburdened her mind.
     'What a pretty  fellow he is when he's asleep!' said Berry, stopping to
look at Paul in bed, one night when she took up Mrs Wickam's supper.
     'Ah!' sighed Mrs Wickam. 'He need be.'
     'Why, he's not ugly when he's awake,' observed Berry.
     'No, Ma'am.  Oh,  no. No more  was my Uncle's  Betsey Jane,'  said  Mrs
Wickam.
     Berry  looked as if  she  would like to  trace  the connexion of  ideas
between Paul Dombey and Mrs Wickam's Uncle's Betsey Jane
     'My Uncle's wife,' Mrs Wickam went on to say, 'died just like his Mama.
My Uncle's child took on just as Master Paul do.'
     'Took on! You don't think he grieves for his Mama, sure?' argued Berry,
sitting down on  the side of the bed. 'He can't remember anything about her,
you know, Mrs Wickam. It's not possible.'
     'No,  Ma'am,'  said Mrs Wickam  'No more did my Uncle's  child.  But my
Uncle's child said  very strange things sometimes,  and looked very strange,
and went on very strange, and was  very strange altogether. My Uncle's child
made people's blood run cold, some times, she did!'
     'How?' asked Berry.
     'I wouldn't  have  sat up all night alone with  Betsey  Jane!' said Mrs
Wickam,  'not  if  you'd  have  put Wickam  into  business next  morning for
himself. I couldn't have done it, Miss Berry.
     Miss Berry naturally asked  why not? But Mrs Wickam,  agreeably to  the
usage  of  some  ladies  in her  condition,  pursued her  own  branch of the
subject, without any compunction.
     'Betsey Jane,' said Mrs Wickam, 'was as sweet a child as I  could  wish
to see. I couldn't wish to see a sweeter. Everything that a child could have
in the way of  illnesses,  Betsey  Jane had come through.  The cramps was as
common to her,' said Mrs Wickam, 'as biles is to yourself, Miss Berry.' Miss
Berry involuntarily wrinkled her nose.
     'But Betsey  Jane,' said  Mrs Wickam,  lowering her voice,  and looking
round the room, and towards Paul in bed, 'had been minded, in her cradle, by
her  departed mother. I  couldn't say how,  nor  I couldn't say when,  nor I
couldn't say whether the dear child knew it or not, but Betsey Jane had been
watched by her mother, Miss Berry!'  and Mrs Wickam, with a very white face,
and with watery  eyes,  and with a tremulous  voice, again looked  fearfully
round the room, and towards Paul in bed.
     'Nonsense!' cried Miss Berry - somewhat resentful of the idea.
     'You  may say nonsense! I ain't offended, Miss. I hope you  may be able
to  think in  your own  conscience that  it is nonsense;  you'll  find  your
spirits all the better for it in this - you'll excuse my being so  free - in
this burying-ground of a place; which is wearing of me down. Master Paul's a
little restless in his sleep. Pat his back, if you please.'
     'Of course you  think,' said Berry, gently  doing  what she  was asked,
'that he has been nursed by his mother, too?'
     'Betsey Jane,' returned Mrs Wickam  in her most  solemn tones, 'was put
upon as that child has been put upon, and changed as that child has changed.
I have seen her sit,  often  and often,  think, think, thinking, like him. I
have seen  her  look, often and often, old, old, old, like him. I have heard
her, many a time, talk just like him. I consider that child and  Betsey Jane
on the same footing entirely, Miss Berry.'
     'Is your Uncle's child alive?' asked Berry.
     'Yes, Miss, she is alive,' returned Mrs Wickam with an  air of triumph,
for it  was evident. Miss Berry expected  the reverse; 'and  is married to a
silver-chaser. Oh yes, Miss, SHE is alive,' said Mrs  Wickam,  laying strong
stress on her nominative case.
     It being clear that somebody was dead, Mrs Pipchin's niece inquired who
it was.
     'I wouldn't wish to make you uneasy,' returned Mrs Wickam, pursuing her
supper. Don't ask me.'
     This was the surest way of being  asked  again. Miss Berry repeated her
question,  therefore; and after some resistance, and reluctance,  Mrs Wickam
laid  down  her knife, and again glancing round the room and at Paul in bed,
replied:
     'She  took fancies to people; whimsical fancies, some  of them; others,
affections that one  might expect to see -  only stronger than  common. They
all died.'
     This was so very unexpected and awful to  Mrs Pipchin's niece, that she
sat upright on the hard edge of the bedstead, breathing short, and surveying
her informant with looks of undisguised alarm.
     Mrs Wickam  shook her left fore-finger stealthily towards the bed where
Florence lay; then turned it upside down, and  made several emphatic  points
at the floor; immediately below which  was the parlour in which Mrs  Pipchin
habitually consumed the toast.
     'Remember my words, Miss Berry,' said Mrs Wickam, 'and be thankful that
Master Paul is not too fond of you. I am, that  he's not  too fond of me,  I
assure you; though there isn't much to live for - you'll excuse my  being so
free - in this jail of a house!'
     Miss Berry's emotion might have led to her patting Paul too hard on the
back, or might have produced a cessation of that  soothing  monotony, but he
turned in his bed just  now,  and, presently awaking, sat  up in it with his
hair  hot  and wet from the  effects of some childish dream,  and  asked for
Florence.
     She was out of her own bed at the first sound of his voice; and bending
over his pillow immediately, sang him to sleep again. Mrs Wickam shaking her
head, and letting fall several tears, pointed out the little group to Berry,
and turned her eyes up to the ceiling.
     'He's asleep  now,  my  dear,' said  Mrs  Wickam after a pause,  'you'd
better go to bed again. Don't you feel cold?'
     'No, nurse,' said Florence, laughing. 'Not at all.'
     'Ah!'  sighed Mrs Wickam, and she  shook her head again, expressing  to
the watchful Berry, 'we shall be cold enough, some of us, by and by!'
     Berry took  the  frugal supper-tray,  with which Mrs Wickam had by this
time done, and bade her good-night.
     'Good-night, Miss!' returned  Wickam softly. 'Good-night! Your  aunt is
an old lady, Miss Berry, and it's what you must have looked for, often.'
     This  consolatory  farewell, Mrs  Wickam accompanied  with  a  look  of
heartfelt  anguish; and being left  alone  with the two  children again, and
becoming conscious that the wind was  blowing  mournfully,  she  indulged in
melancholy - that cheapest and  most accessible of luxuries -  until she was
overpowered by slumber.
     Although the niece of Mrs Pipchin did not expect to find that exemplary
dragon  prostrate on  the  hearth-rug  when  she  went downstairs,  she  was
relieved to find her unusually fractious and severe, and with  every present
appearance of intending to live a long time to be a  comfort to all who knew
her.  Nor had she any  symptoms of declining,  in the  course of the ensuing
week, when the constitutional viands still continued to disappear in regular
succession, notwithstanding that  Paul studied her  as attentively  as ever,
and occupied  his  usual seat between the black skirts and the  fender, with
unwavering constancy.
     But as Paul himself was no stronger at the expiration of that time than
he had  been  on his first  arrival, though he  looked much healthier in the
face,  a little carriage was got for him, in which he could lie at his ease,
with  an alphabet  and other elementary works  of reference, and  be wheeled
down to the sea-side.  Consistent in his  odd tastes, the child  set aside a
ruddy-faced  lad  who  was proposed  as the drawer  of  this  carriage,  and
selected,  instead, his grandfather  - a  weazen, old, crab-faced man, in  a
suit  of battered oilskin,  who had got tough and stringy from long pickling
in salt water, and who smelt like a weedy sea-beach when the tide is out.
     With this  notable attendant  to  pull him  along, and  Florence always
walking by his side, and the despondent Wickam bringing up the rear, he went
down to the margin of  the ocean every day; and there he would sit or lie in
his  carriage for  hours together: never so distressed  as by the company of
children - Florence alone excepted, always.
     'Go away,  if  you  please,' he would say to any child who came to bear
him company. Thank you, but I don't want you.'
     Some small voice, near his ear, would ask him how he was, perhaps.
     'I am very well, I  thank you,' he would answer. 'But you had better go
and play, if you please.'
     Then  he  would turn his head, and  watch  the child away, and  say  to
Florence, 'We don't want any others, do we? Kiss me, Floy.'
     He had even a dislike, at such times, to the company of Wickam, and was
well pleased when she strolled away, as she generally did, to pick up shells
and acquaintances. His favourite spot was quite  a lonely one, far away from
most loungers; and with Florence sitting  by his side at work, or reading to
him, or talking to him,  and  the wind  blowing  on his face, and  the water
coming up among the wheels of his bed, he wanted nothing more.
     'Floy,'  he said one day,  'where's  India,  where that  boy's  friends
live?'
     'Oh, it's a long, long distance off,' said  Florence, raising  her eyes
from her work.
     'Weeks off?' asked Paul.
     'Yes dear. Many weeks' journey, night and day.'
     'If you were  in  India,  Floy,' said  Paul,  after being silent  for a
minute, 'I should - what is it that Mama did? I forget.'
     'Loved me!' answered Florence.
     'No, no. Don't I love you now, Floy? What is it? - Died. in you were in
India, I should die, Floy.'
     She hurriedly put her work aside, and laid her head down on his pillow,
caressing him. And so  would she, she  said, if he were there. He  would  be
better soon.
     'Oh! I  am a great deal better now!' he answered. 'I don't mean that. I
mean that I should die of being so sorry and so lonely, Floy!'
     Another time, in the same place, he  fell asleep, and slept quietly for
a long time. Awaking suddenly, he listened, started up, and sat listening.
     Florence asked him what he thought he heard.
     'I  want to know  what  it says,' he answered, looking steadily in  her
face. 'The sea' Floy, what is it that it keeps on saying?'
     She told him that it was only the noise of the rolling waves.
     'Yes, yes,' he said. 'But I know that they are always saying something.
Always the same  thing.  What  place is  over  there?' He  rose  up, looking
eagerly at the horizon.
     She told  him  that there was another country opposite, but he said  he
didn't mean that: he meant further away - farther away!
     Very  often afterwards, in the midst of their talk, he would break off,
to try to understand  what it was  that the  waves were always  saying;  and
would rise up in his couch to look towards that invisible region, far away.

        CHAPTER 9.
     In which the Wooden Midshipman gets into Trouble

     That spice of romance and love of  the marvellous, of which there was a
pretty strong  infusion in  the nature  of  young Walter  Gay, and which the
guardianship of  his Uncle, old Solomon Gills, had not very much weakened by
the waters of stern practical experience, was the occasion of his  attaching
an uncommon  and delightful  interest to the adventure of Florence with Good
Mrs Brown. He pampered and  cherished it in his memory, especially that part
of  it with which he had been associated:  until it became the spoiled child
of his fancy, and took its own way, and did what it liked with it.
     The recollection  of those  incidents, and his own share  in  them, may
have been made the more captivating, perhaps, by the weekly dreamings of old
Sol  and  Captain  Cuttle  on  Sundays.  Hardly  a  Sunday  passed,  without
mysterious references  being made by one  or other of those worthy  chums to
Richard Whittington; and the  latter gentleman had  even gone so  far  as to
purchase  a ballad of considerable antiquity, that had long fluttered  among
many  others, chiefly expressive of  maritime sentiments, on a dead  wall in
the  Commercial Road: which poetical performance set forth the courtship and
nuptials  of a promising young coal-whipper with a certain 'lovely Peg,' the
accomplished daughter of the master and  part-owner of  a Newcastle collier.
In this  stirring  legend, Captain Cuttle  descried  a profound metaphysical
bearing on the case of Walter and Florence; and it excited him so much, that
on  very  festive  occasions,  as  birthdays  and  a few other non-Dominical
holidays, he would roar through  the whole song  in the little back parlour;
making  an  amazing  shake on the  word  Pe-e-eg,  with  which  every  verse
concluded, in compliment to the heroine of the piece.
     But  a  frank,  free-spirited,  open-hearted boy, is not much given  to
analysing  the nature of  his  own feelings,  however strong their hold upon
him: and Walter would have found it difficult to decide this point. He had a
great affection for the wharf where he had encountered Florence, and for the
streets (albeit not enchanting in  themselves) by  which they had come home.
The shoes that had so often tumbled off by the way, he  preserved in his own
room; and, sitting in the little back parlour of an evening, he had  drawn a
whole gallery of fancy portraits of Good Mrs Brown. It may be that he became
a  little smarter  in  his dress  after  that  memorable  occasion;  and  he
certainly liked in his leisure time to walk towards that quarter of the town
where Mr Dombey's house was situated, on  the vague chance of passing little
Florence in the street.  But  the sentiment  of all this was as  boyish  and
innocent as could be. Florence was very pretty, and it is pleasant to admire
a pretty face. Florence was defenceless and weak, and it was a proud thought
that he had been able to render  her any protection and assistance. Florence
was the most grateful little creature in the world, and it was delightful to
see  her bright gratitude  beaming in her  face.  Florence was neglected and
coldly looked upon, and his breast  was  full  of youthful interest  for the
slighted child in her dull, stately home.
     Thus it  came about that, perhaps some half-a-dozen times in the course
of  the  year, Walter  pulled off his hat  to  Florence in  the  street, and
Florence would stop to shake hands. Mrs  Wickam (who, with  a characteristic
alteration of his  name, invariably spoke  of him as 'Young  Graves') was so
well used to this, knowing the story of their acquaintance, that she took no
heed  of it at all.  Miss Nipper, on the  other hand, rather  looked out for
these  occasions: her sensitive young heart  being  secretly propitiated  by
Walter's good  looks,  and  inclining to the belief that its sentiments were
responded to.
     In this way, Walter, so far  from forgetting  or  losing  sight of  his
acquaintance with Florence, only remembered it better and better. As to  its
adventurous  beginning, and  all those little circumstances which  gave it a
distinctive character  and  relish,  he took  them into  account, more as  a
pleasant story very agreeable to his  imagination,  and not to be  dismissed
from it, than as a part of any matter of fact with  which he was  concerned.
They set off Florence very much, to his fancy; but not himself. Sometimes he
thought (and then he walked very fast) what a grand thing it would have been
for him to have been going to  sea on the day after  that first meeting, and
to  have gone, and to have done  wonders there,  and to have  stopped away a
long  time, and  to  have come back an Admiral of  all  the colours  of  the
dolphin,  or  at  least  a  Post-Captain  with  epaulettes  of insupportable
brightness,  and  have married Florence  (then  a beautiful young woman)  in
spite of Mr Dombey's  teeth, cravat, and watch-chain, and borne her  away to
the  blue shores of somewhere or  other,  triumphantly. But these flights of
fancy seldom burnished the brass plate  of Dombey and Son's Offices  into  a
tablet of golden hope, or shed a brilliant lustre on  their dirty skylights;
and  when the Captain  and Uncle Sol  talked  about  Richard Whittington and
masters'  daughters,  Walter  felt that he  understood his true  position at
Dombey and Son's, much better than they did.
     So it was that he went on doing what he had to do from day to day, in a
cheerful,  pains-taking,  merry  spirit;   and  saw   through  the  sanguine
complexion of  Uncle Sol and Captain Cuttle; and yet entertained a  thousand
indistinct and visionary fancies of his own, to which theirs were work-a-day
probabilities. Such was his condition at the  Pipchin period, when he looked
a  little older  than of yore, but not much; and was the  same light-footed,
light-hearted, light-headed  lad, as when he charged into the parlour at the
head of Uncle Sol and  the  imaginary boarders,  and lighted him to bring up
the Madeira.
     'Uncle Sol,' said Walter, 'I don't think you're well. You haven't eaten
any breakfast. I shall bring a doctor to you, if you go on like this.'
     'He can't give me what I want, my boy,' said Uncle Sol. 'At least he is
in good practice if he can - and then he wouldn't.'
     'What is it, Uncle? Customers?'
     'Ay,' returned Solomon, with a sigh. 'Customers would do.'
     'Confound it,  Uncle!' said Walter, putting down his breakfast cup with
a  clatter, and striking his hand on the table: 'when I see the people going
up  and  down the street in shoals  all day, and passing  and re-passing the
shop every minute, by scores,  I  feel  half  tempted  to  rush  out, collar
somebody, bring him in, and  make him buy fifty pounds' worth of instruments
for ready money. What are  you  looking in  at the door for?  -  ' continued
Walter, apostrophizing an old gentleman with a  powdered head  (inaudibly to
him of course), who was staring at a ship's telescope with all his might and
main. 'That's no use. I could do that. Come in and buy it!'
     The  old  gentleman,  however,  having  satiated  his curiosity, walked
calmly away.
     'There he goes!'  said Walter. 'That's the way with 'em all. But, Uncle
-  I say, Uncle Sol' - for the old man was meditating and had not  responded
to his first appeal. 'Don't  be cast  down. Don't be  out of spirits, Uncle.
When orders do come, they'll come in such  a  crowd, you won't  be  able  to
execute 'em.'
     'I shall be past executing 'em,  whenever they come, my  boy,' returned
Solomon Gills. 'They'll never come to this shop again, till I am out of t.'
     'I say, Uncle! You musn't really, you know!' urged Walter. 'Don't!'
     Old  Sol endeavoured  to assume  a cheery look,  and smiled  across the
little table at him as pleasantly as he could.
     'There's  nothing  more than usual the matter;  is  there, Uncle?' said
Walter, leaning his elbows on the tea  tray, and  bending over, to speak the
more  confidentially and kindly. 'Be open with me, Uncle,  if there is,  and
tell me all about it.'
     'No, no, no,'  returned Old Sol.  'More than usual? No, no. What should
there be the matter more than usual?'
     Walter answered with an incredulous shake  of his  head. 'That's what I
want to know,' he said, 'and you ask  me! I'll  tell you what, Uncle, when I
see you like this, I am quite sorry that I live with you.'
     Old Sol opened his eyes involuntarily.
     'Yes.  Though nobody ever  was happier than I am  and always  have been
with you, I  am quite  sorry that  I  live with  you,  when I  see  you with
anything in your mind.'
     'I  am a  little dull at  such times, I know,' observed Solomon, meekly
rubbing his hands.
     'What I mean, Uncle Sol,' pursued Walter, bending over a little more to
pat him on the shoulder,  'is, that then I feel you ought  to  have, sitting
here and pouring  out the tea  instead  of  me, a nice  little dumpling of a
wife, you know,  -  a  comfortable, capital, cosy  old  lady, who was just a
match for you, and knew how to manage you, and keep you in good heart.  Here
am  I, as loving  a nephew as ever was (I am  sure  I ought to be!) but I am
only a  nephew,  and I  can't be such a companion to you when you're low and
out of sorts as she would  have made herself, years ago, though I'm sure I'd
give  any money if I could cheer you  up. And so I say, when I see you  with
anything  on your  mind,  that I feel quite sorry  you haven't got  somebody
better  about you than a  blundering young rough-and-tough  boy like me, who
has got the will to console you, Uncle, but  hasn't got the way - hasn't got
the way,' repeated Walter, reaching over further yet,  to shake his Uncle by
the hand.
     'Wally, my dear boy,'  said Solomon, 'if the  cosy little old lady  had
taken her place in this parlour five and forty years ago, I never could have
been fonder of her than I am of you.'
     'I  know that, Uncle Sol,'  returned Walter.  'Lord bless  you,  I know
that. But you  wouldn't  have  had  the  whole  weight  of any uncomfortable
secrets  if she had  been  with  you,  because she would  have known how  to
relieve you of 'em, and I don't.'
     'Yes, yes, you do,' returned the Instrument-maker.
     'Well  then, what's  the matter,  Uncle Sol?'  said Walter,  coaxingly.
'Come! What's the matter?'
     Solomon  Gills  persisted  that  there  was  nothing  the  matter;  and
maintained it so resolutely,  that his nephew had no  resource but to make a
very indifferent imitation of believing him.
     'All I can say is, Uncle Sol, that if there is - '
     'But there isn't,' said Solomon.
     'Very well,, said Walter.  'Then I've no more to say; and that's lucky,
for my time's up for going to business.  I shall look in by-and-by when  I'm
out, to see how you get  on,  Uncle. And mind, Uncle! I'll never believe you
again, and  never tell you anything more  about  Mr Carker  the Junior, if I
find out that you have been deceiving me!'
     Solomon Gills laughingly defied  him to find out anything of the  kind;
and Walter, revolving in  his thoughts  all sorts of  impracticable  ways of
making  fortunes  and  placing  the  wooden  Midshipman  in  a  position  of
independence, betook himself to the offices of Dombey and Son with a heavier
countenance than he usually carried there.
     There lived in those days,  round the corner  - in  Bishopsgate  Street
Without  - one Brogley, sworn broker  and appraiser, who  kept  a shop where
every  description  of  second-hand  furniture was  exhibited  in  the  most
uncomfortable  aspect, and under  circumstances and in combinations the most
completely  foreign   to  its  purpose.   Dozens  of  chairs  hooked  on  to
washing-stands, which with  difficulty poised themselves on the shoulders of
sideboards, which in their turn stood upon the wrong  side of dining-tables,
gymnastic  with their legs upward on the  tops of  other dining-tables, were
among  its most reasonable  arrangements. A  banquet array  of  dish-covers,
wine-glasses,  and decanters was generally to be seen, spread forth upon the
bosom of  a four-post bedstead, for the entertainment of such genial company
as  half-a-dozen  pokers, and  a hall lamp. A set of window curtains with no
windows  belonging to them, would  be seen gracefully draping a barricade of
chests  of drawers, loaded  with little jars from  chemists'  shops; while a
homeless hearthrug  severed from its natural companion  the fireside, braved
the  shrewd east wind in  its  adversity, and trembled in  melancholy accord
with the shrill complainings  of a cabinet piano, wasting  away,  a string a
day, and faintly resounding to the noises of the street  in its jangling and
distracted brain. Of  motionless clocks that  never  stirred  a finger,  and
seemed as incapable of being successfully wound up, as the pecuniary affairs
of their former owners, there was always great  choice in Mr Brogley's shop;
and  various  looking-glasses,  accidentally  placed at compound interest of
reflection and refraction,  presented to  the eye an eternal  perspective of
bankruptcy and ruin.
     Mr Brogley himself was a  moist-eyed,  pink-complexioned,  crisp-haired
man, of a bulky figure and  an easy temper - for  that class of Caius Marius
who sits upon the ruins of other people's Carthages, can keep up his spirits
well enough. He had looked in at Solomon's shop sometimes, to ask a question
about   articles  in   Solomon's  way  of  business;  and  Walter  knew  him
sufficiently to give him good day when they met in the  street. But  as that
was  the extent of the broker's acquaintance with Solomon Gills also, Walter
was not a little surprised when he came back in the course  of the forenoon,
agreeably to his promise, to  find Mr Brogley  sitting  in  the back parlour
with his hands in his pockets, and his hat hanging up behind the door.
     'Well, Uncle Sol!' said Walter. The old man was sitting ruefully on the
opposite side of the table, with his spectacles over his eyes, for a wonder,
instead of on his forehead. 'How are you now?'
     Solomon  shook  his head,  and waved one  hand  towards  the broker, as
introducing him.
     'Is there anything  the matter?'  asked Walter, with  a catching in his
breath.
     'No, no. There's nothing the matter, said Mr Brogley. 'Don't let it put
you out  of  the way.' Walter  looked  from the broker  to his Uncle in mute
amazement.  'The fact  is,' said Mr Brogley,  'there's a little payment on a
bond debt - three hundred and seventy odd, overdue: and I'm in possession.'
     'In possession!' cried Walter, looking round at the shop.
     'Ah!' said Mr  Brogley, in confidential assent, and nodding his head as
if he would  urge the advisability of their all being  comfortable together.
'It's an execution. That's what it is. Don't let it put you  out of the way.
I come  myself, because of keeping it quiet and sociable. You know me.  It's
quite private.'
     'Uncle Sol!' faltered Walter.
     'Wally,  my  boy,' returned his  uncle. 'It's the  first time.  Such  a
calamity never happened to me before.  I'm an old man to begin.'  Pushing up
his spectacles  again  (for they  were useless any  longer  to  conceal  his
emotion), he covered his face with his hand, and sobbed aloud, and his tears
fell down upon his coffee-coloured waistcoat.
     'Uncle Sol! Pray! oh don't!' exclaimed Walter, who really felt a thrill
of terror in seeing the  old man  weep.  'For God's sake  don't  do that. Mr
Brogley, what shall I do?'
     'I should recommend you  looking up a  friend or so,' said Mr  Brogley,
'and talking it over.'
     'To be sure!' cried Walter, catching  at anything. 'Certainly! Thankee.
Captain  Cuttle's the man, Uncle.