h  success  to that 'ere brig as  a lad  is  capable on. Wal'r,' said the
Captain,  his eyes glistening with the praise  of his  young friend, and his
hook  raised  to  announce a beautiful  quotation, 'is  what you may call  a
out'ard and visible sign of an in'ard  and  spirited  grasp, and  when found
make a note of.'
     Florence,  who  did  not  quite  understand this,  though  the  Captain
evidentllty thought  it  full  of meaning, and  highly  satisfactory, mildly
looked to him for something more.
     'I am  not  afeard, my Heart's-delight,' resumed the Captain,  'There's
been most uncommon bad  weather in  them latitudes, there's no denyin',  and
they  have drove and drove and been beat off, may be t'other side the world.
But the  ship's a  good ship, and the lad's a good  lad;  and it ain't easy,
thank the Lord,' the Captain made a little bow,  'to break up hearts of oak,
whether they're in brigs  or  buzzums. Here we have 'em both ways, which  is
bringing it up with a round turn, and so I ain't a bit afeard as yet.'
     'As yet?' repeated Florence.
     'Not a bit,'  returned the Captain, kissing his iron hand; 'and afore I
begin to be, my Hearts-delight, Wal'r will have wrote  home from the island,
or from some port  or  another, and  made all  taut and  shipsahape'And with
regard to old Sol Gills, here the Captain became solemn, 'who I'll stand by,
and not desert until death do us part, and when the stormy winds do blow, do
blow, do blow - overhaul the  Catechism,' said the Captain  parenthetically,
'and there you'll find  them expressions  - if it would console Sol Gills to
have  the opinion  of a  seafaring  man as has  got  a  mind  equal  to  any
undertaking that  he puts it alongside  of,  and as was  all but  smashed in
his'prenticeship, and of which the name is  Bunsby, that 'ere man shall give
him  such an  opinion in his own  parlour as'll stun him. Ah!'  said Captain
Cuttle,  vauntingly, 'as much as  if he'd  gone and knocked his head again a
door!'
     'Let us take this ~gentleman to see him, and let us hear what he says,'
cried Florence. 'Will you go with us now? We have a coach here.'
     Again  the  Captain  clapped his hand  to his head, on  which  the hard
glazed  hat was not, and  looked  discomfited. But  at  this instant  a most
remarkable  phenomenon  occurred. The door  opening,  without  any  note  of
preparation,  and  apparently of itself, the  hard  glazed hat  in  question
skimmed into  the room  like a bird,  and alighted heavily at  the Captain's
feet.  The door then shut as violently  as it had opened, and nothIng ensued
in explanation of the prodigy.
     Captain Cuttle picked up his hat, and having turned it over with a look
of interest and welcome, began to polish it  on his sleeve'  While doing so,
the Captain eyed his visitors intently, and said in a low voice
     'You  see I  should  have bore down on  Sol  Gills yesterday, and  this
morning,  but she -  she took it away and kep it. That's the long  and short
ofthe subject.'
     'Who did, for goodness sake?' asked Susan Nipper.
     'The  lady of the  house, my  dear,'returned the  Captain,  in  a gruff
whisper, and making signals of secrecy.'We had some words about the swabbing
of these  here planks, and  she  -  In short,'  said the Captain, eyeing the
door, and relieving himself with a long breath, 'she stopped my liberty.'
     'Oh! I wish she had me to  deal  with!' said  Susan, reddening with the
energy of the wish. 'I'd stop her!'
     'Would you,  do you, my dear?' rejoined the  Captain, shaking his  head
doubtfully,  but regarding the  desperate  courage of the fair aspirant with
obvious admiration.  'I  don't know. It's difficult  navigation.  She's very
hard to carry on with, my dear. You never can tell how she'll head, you see.
She's full one minute, and round upon you next.  And when  she in a tartar,'
said  the Captain,  with  the  perspiration breaking out upon his  forehead.
There  was nothing but a  whistle  emphatic enough for the conclusion of the
sentence,  so the Captain whistled tremulously.  After  which he again shook
his head, and  recurring to his admiration of Miss Nipper's devoted bravery,
timidly repeated, 'Would you, do you think, my dear?'
     Susan only replied with a  bridling smile, but that was so very full of
defiance, that there is no knowing how  long Captain Cuttle might have stood
entranced in  its  contemplation, if  Florence in her anxiety had not  again
proposed  their  immediately resorting to the oracular Bunsby. Thus reminded
of his duty, Captain  Cuttle Put on the glazed  hat  firmly, took up another
knobby stick,  with which  he had supplied  the place of that one  given  to
Walter,  and offering  his arm to Florence, prepared to cut his way  through
the enemy.
     It turned  out,  however, that  Mrs MacStinger  had already changed her
course, and that she  headed, as the Captain had  remarked she often did, in
quite a  new  direction.  For when  they  got  downstairs,  they  found that
exemplary woman beating  the mats  on the  doorsteps, with Alexander,  still
upon the paving-stone, dimly looming through  a fog of dust; and so absorbed
was Mrs MacStinger in her household occupation, that when Captain Cuttle and
his  visitors  passed, she beat  the harder, and neither by word nor gesture
showed any consciousness of their vicinity.  The Captain was so well pleased
with this easy escape - although the effect of the door-mats on him was like
a copious administration of snuff, and made him sneeze  until  the tears ran
down his face - that he could hardly believe his good fortune; but more than
once, between the door and the hackney-coach, looked over his shoulder, with
an obvious apprehension of Mrs MacStinger's giving chase yet.
     However, they got to the  corner  of Brig Place without any molestation
from that terrible fire-ship; and  the Captain mounting the  coach-box - for
his gallantry  would not allow him  to ride  inside with  the ladies, though
besought  to do so - piloted the driver on  his  course for Captain Bunsby's
vessel,  which  was  called  the Cautious  Clara,  and  was  lying  hard  by
Ratcliffe.
     Arrived at  the wharf off which this great  commander's ship was jammed
in among  some  five hundred  companions, whose  tangled rigging looked like
monstrous   cobwebs  half  swept   down,  Captain  Cuttle  appeared  at  the
coach-window,  and invited  Florence and Miss Nipper  to  accompany  him  on
board; observing that Bunsby  was to the last degree soft-hearted in respect
of  ladies,  and  that nothing  would so  much  tend to bring  his expansive
intellect  into  a state of harmony  as  their presentation to  the Cautious
Clara.
     Florence readily consented; and the Captain, taking  her little hand in
his  prodigious  palm,  led  her,  with  a  mixed  expression  of patronage,
paternity, pride, and ceremony, that was pleasant to see,  over several very
dirty decks,  until,  coming to the Clara, they  found  that cautious  craft
(which lay outside the tier) with her gangway removed, and half-a-dozen feet
of  river interposed between herself and her nearest neighbour. It appeared,
from Captain Cuttle's explanation, that  the great Bunsby, like himself, was
cruelly treated by his landlady, and that when her usage of him for the time
being was so hard that he could bear it no longer, he set  this gulf between
them as a last resource.
     'Clara a-hoy!' cried  the  Captain, putting a hand  to each side of his
mouth.
     'A-hoy!' cried a boy, like the Captain's echo, tumbling up from below.
     'Bunsby aboard?'  cried  the Captain, hailing  the boy  in a stentorian
voice, as if he were half-a-mile off instead of two yards.
     'Ay, ay!' cried the boy, in the same tone.
     The boy then shoved out a plank  to  Captain  Cuttle,  who  adjusted it
carefully, and  led Florence across: returning presently for Miss Nipper. So
they stood upon the deck of the Cautious Clara,  in  whose standing rigging,
divers fluttering  articles of  dress  were curing,  in company with  a  few
tongues and some mackerel.
     Immediately there appeared, coming slowly up above the bulk-head of the
cabin, another bulk-head 'human, and very large - with one stationary eye in
the  mahogany  face,  and  one  revolving one,  on  the  principle  of  some
lighthouses. This head  was decorated with  shaggy hair,  like oakum,' which
had no governing inclination  towards the north, east, west,  or  south, but
inclined to  all four quarters of the compass, and to every  point  upon it.
The head was followed by a perfect desert of chin, and by a shirt-collar and
neckerchief, and by a dreadnought  pilot-coat, and by a pair of  dreadnought
pilot-trousers, whereof the waistband was  so very  broad  and high, that it
became  a succedaneum  for  a waistcoat: being ornamented near the  wearer's
breastbone with  some  massive wooden  buttons, like backgammon  men. As the
lower portions of these pantaloons became  revealed, Bunsby stood confessed;
his hands in their pockets, which  were of vast size; and his gaze directed,
not to Captain Cuttle or the ladies, but the mast-head.
     The profound appearance of this philosopher,  who was bulky and strong,
and on whose extremely red face an expression of taciturnity  sat enthroned,
not  inconsistent  with  his character,  in which  that  quality was proudly
conspicuous,  almost daunted  Captain Cuttle,  though on familiar terms with
him.  Whispering  to  Florence  that Bunsby had never in his life  expressed
surprise, and was considered not to know what it  meant, the Captain watched
him as he eyed his mast-head, and afterwards swept the horizon; and when the
revolving eye seemed to be coming round in his direction, said:
     'Bunsby, my lad, how fares it?'
     A deep, gruff, husky  utterance, which seemed to have no connexion with
Bunsby, and certainly had not the least  effect upon his face, replied, 'Ay,
ay,  shipmet,  how goes it?' At the  same time  Bunsby's right hand and arm,
emerging from a pocket, shook the Captain's, and went back again.
     'Bunsby,' said the Captain, striking home at once, 'here you are; a man
of mind, and a man as can give an  opinion. Here's a young lady  as wants to
take that opinion, in regard of my friend Wal'r; likewise my t'other friend,
Sol Gills, which is a character for you  to come within hail of, being a man
of science, which is the mother of inwention, and knows no law. Bunsby, will
you wear, to oblige me, and come along with us?'
     The  great commander,  who seemed  by  expression of his visage  to  be
always on the look-out for something in  the extremest distance' and to have
no ocular knowledge of any anng' within ten miles, made no reply whatever.
     'Here is  a  man,' said  the Captain, addressing  himself  to  his fair
auditors, and indicating the commander with his outstretched hook, 'that has
fell down, more than any  man alive; that  has had more accidents  happen to
his own  self  than  the  Seamen's Hospital to all  hands; that took as many
spars and bars and bolts about the outside of his head when he was young, as
you'd want a order for on  Chatham-yard  to build a pleasure yacht with; and
yet that his opinions in that way, it's my  belief,  for there ain't nothing
like 'em afloat or ashore.'
     The stolid commander appeared by a very slight vibration in his elbows,
to express some  satisfitction in this encomium; but if his face had been as
distant as his gaze was, it could hardIy have enlightened the beholders less
in reference to anything that was passing in his thoughts.
     'Shipmate,' said Bunsby, all of a sudden, and stooping down to look out
under some interposing spar, 'what'll the ladies drink?'
     Captain  Cuttle,  whose delicacy  was shocked  by  such  an  inquiry in
connection with Florence, drew the sage aside, and seeming to explain in his
ear, accompanied him  below; where,  that he  might  not  take  offence, the
Captain drank a dram  himself' which  Florence  and Susan, glancing down the
open  skylight, saw  the  sage,  with  difficulty  finding room for  himself
between  his berth and a very little brass fireplace, serve out for self and
friend. They soon  reappeared on deck, and Captain Cuttle, triumphing in the
success of  his enterprise,  conducted  Florence  back to  the  coach, while
Bunsby followed, escorting Miss Nipper, whom he hugged upon the way (much to
that young lady's indignation) with his pilot-coated arm, like a blue bear.
     The Captain put  his  oracle  inside, and  gloried  so  much in  having
secured  him, and having got that mind into  a hackney-coach, that he  could
not refrain from often  peeping in  at Florence  through  the little  window
behind  the driver,  and testifiing  his delight in smiles, and also in taps
upon  his forehead, to hint to her that the brain of Bunsby was  hard at it'
In  the meantime, Bunsby, still  hugging Miss  Nipper  (for his  friend, the
Captain,  had  not  exaggerated  the  softness  of  his  heart),  uniformily
preserved his  gravity of deportment, and showed no other  consciousness  of
her or anything.
     Uncle  Sol, who had come home,  received them at the door,  and ushered
them  immediately into the  little back parlour:  strangely  altered by  the
absence of Walter.  On the table, and about the  room,  were the charts  and
maps on which the heavy-hearted Instrument-maker had again and again tracked
the missing  vessel  across the sea,  and on which, with a pair of compasses
that he still had in his hand, he had been measuring,  a  minute before, how
far  she  must have  driven, to have driven  here  or  there: and trying  to
demonstrate that a long time must elapse before hope was exhausted.
     'Whether  she can have run,' said Uncle Sol, looking wistfully over the
chart; 'but no, that's almost impossible or whether she can have been forced
by stress  of weather,  - but that's not reasonably likely. Or whether there
is any hope she so  far changed  her course as -  but even I can hardly hope
that!' With such  broken  suggestions,  poor old Uncle  Sol roamed over  the
great sheet before him, and could not find a speck of hopeful probability in
it large enough to set one small point of the compasses upon.
     Florence saw immediately - it would  have been difficult to help seeing
- that there was a singular, indescribable change  in the  old man, and that
while  his manner was far more restless and unsettled  than usual, there was
yet a curious, contradictory decision in it, that perplexed her  very  much.
She fancied once  that he spoke wildly, and at random; for on her saying she
regretted not to have seen  him when she had been there before that morning,
he at first replied that he had been  to see  her,  and  directly afterwards
seemed to wish to recall that answer.
     'You have been to see me?' said Florence. 'To-day?'
     'Yes, my dear young lady,' returned  Uncle Sol, looking at her and away
from her in a confused manner. 'I wished to see you with my own eyes, and to
hear you with my own ears, once more before - ' There he stopped.
     'Before when? Before what?' said  Florence,  putting  her hand upon his
arm.
     'Did I  say "before?"'  replied old  Sol. 'If I did, I must have  meant
before we should have news of my dear boy.'
     'You  are not  well,' said Florence, tenderly.  'You have been so  very
anxious I am sure you are not well.'
     'I am as well,'  returned  the old man, shutting up his right hand, and
holding it out to show her: 'as well and firm as any man  at my time of life
can hope to be. See! It's steady. Is its master not as capable of resolution
and fortitude as many a younger man? I think so. We shall see.'
     There was  that  in  his  manner  more than in his words,  though  they
remained with her too, which impressed Florence so much, that she would have
confided her uneasiness to Captain Cuttle at that moment, if the Captain had
not seized that moment  for expounding the state  of  circumstance, on which
the  opinion of  the  sagacious Bunsby  was requested,  and  entreating that
profound authority to deliver the same.
     Bunsby, whose  eye continued  to be addressed  to  somewhere about  the
half-way house  between London and Gravesend, two or three times put out his
rough right arm, as seeking to wind it for inspiration  round the  fair form
of  Miss  Nipper;  but  that  young  female  having  withdrawn  herself,  in
displeasure,  to  the  opposite side of the  table,  the  soft heart  of the
Commander of the Cautious  Clara met with no response to its impulses. After
sundry  failures  in this wise, the Commander, addressing himself to nobody,
thus spake; or rather the voice within him said of its own accord, and quite
independent of himself, as if he were possessed by a gruff spirit:
     'My name's Jack Bunsby!'
     'He  was christened  John,' cried the  delighted Captain  Cuttle. 'Hear
him!'
     'And  what I  says,'  pursued  the voice,  after  some deliberation, 'I
stands to.
     The Captain,  with Florence  on  his arm,  nodded at the  auditory, and
seemed to say,  'Now he's  coming out. This  is what I  meant when I brought
him.'
     'Whereby,' proceeded the voice, 'why not? If so, what odds? Can any man
say otherwise? No. Awast then!'
     When  it had pursued its  train of  argument to this point,  the  voice
stopped, and rested. It then proceeded very slowly, thus:
     'Do I believe that this here Son and Heir's gone down, my lads? Mayhap.
Do I say so? Which? If a skipper stands out by Sen' George's Channel, making
for the  Downs,  what's right ahead of him? The Goodwins. He isn't foroed to
run upon the Goodwins, but he may.  The bearings of this observation lays in
the application on it. That ain't no  part of  my  duty. Awast then,  keep a
bright look-out for'ard, and good luck to you!'
     The voice here went out of the back parlour and into the street, taking
the  Commander of the  Cautious Clara with it, and accompanying him on board
again with all convenient expedition, where  he immediately  turned  in, and
refreshed his mind with a nap.
     The students of the sage's precepts, left to their  own  application of
his  wisdom - upon a principle  which was the main leg of the Bunsby tripod,
as it is perchance of some other  oracular stools - looked upon one  another
in a  little uncertainty; while Rob  the Grinder, who had taken the innocent
freedom of peering in, and listening, through the skylight in the roof, came
softly down from  the leads, in a  state  of  very  dense confusion. Captain
Cuttle,  however, whose admiration  of Bunsby was, if possible, enhanced  by
the splendid manner  in  which he had  justified  his  reputation  and  come
through  this  solemn  reference,  proceeded  to explain  that  Bunsby meant
nothing but  confidence; that  Bunsby  had no  misgivings; and that such  an
opinion as  that man had given, coming from such a  mind as his,  was Hope's
own anchor,  with good roads to cast  it in. Florence endeavoured to believe
that the  Captain was right; but  the Nipper,  with her arms  tight  folded,
shook her head in resolute denial, and had no more trust m Bunsby than in Mr
Perch himself.
     The philosopher seemed to have  left Uncle Sol pretty much where he had
found him,  for he still went roaming  about the watery  world, compasses in
hand, and discovering no rest for them. It was in pursuance  of a whisper in
his ear from Florence,  while the old man was absorbed in this pursuit, that
Captain Cuttle laid his heavy hand upon his shoulder.
     'What cheer, Sol Gills?' cried the Captain, heartily.
     'But  so-so,  Ned,'   returned  the  Instrument-maker.  'I   have  been
remembering, all this  afternoon,  that on the  very day when my boy entered
Dombey's House,  and  came home late to dinner, sitting just there where you
stand, we talked of storm  and shipwreck, and I could  hardly turn  him from
the subject'
     But  meeting  the  eyes  of  Florence,  which  were  fixed with earnest
scrutiny upon his face, the old man stopped and smiled.
     'Stand  by, old  friend!' cried  the Captain. 'Look  alive! I  tell you
what, Sol  Gills; arter I've  convoyed Heart's-delight  safe home,' here the
Captain kissed his hook to Florence, 'I'll come back and take you in tow for
the rest of this blessed day. You'll come and eat your dinner along with me,
Sol, somewheres or another.'
     'Not  to-day,  Ned!' said the  old  man  quickly,  and appearing to  be
unaccountably startled by the proposition. 'Not to-day. I couldn't do it!'
     'Why not?' returned the Captain, gazing at him in astonishment.
     'I - I  have  so  much  to do. I - I mean  to  think of, and arrange. I
couldn't do it, Ned, indeed. I must go out again, and  be alone, and turn my
mind to many things to-day.'
     The Captain looked at the Instrument-maker, and looked at Florence, and
again at the Instrument-maker. 'To-morrow, then,' he suggested, at last.
     'Yes,  yes. To-morrow,' said the  old man. 'Think of  me to-morrow. Say
to-morrow.'
     'I shall come here early, mind, Sol Gills,' stipulated the Captain.
     'Yes, yes. The  first  thing tomorrow morning,' said old Sol; 'and  now
good-bye, Ned Cuttle, and God bless you!'
     Squeezing both the  Captain's hands, with uncommon fervour,  as he said
it, the old man turned to Florence, folded hers in his own, and put  them to
his   lips;  then  hurried   her  out  to   the  coach  with  very  singular
precipitation. Altogether, he made such an effect on Captain Cuttle that the
Captain  lingered  behind, and instructed Rob  to be particularly gentle and
attentive  to his master until the morning: which injunction he strengthened
with the payment of one shilling  down, and the promise  of another sixpence
before noon  next  day.  This  kind  office  performed, Captain Cuttle,  who
considered  himself  the natural and lawful body-guard of  Florence, mounted
the box with a mighty sense of his trust, and escorted her home. At parting,
he assured  her that he would stand  by Sol Gills,  close and true; and once
again inquired  of Susan Nipper,  unable  to  forget  her  gallant  words in
reference to Mrs MacStinger, 'Would you, do you think my dear, though?'
     When the desolate house had closed upon the two, the Captain's thoughts
reverted to the old Instrument-maker, and  he felt uncomfortable. Therefore,
instead of going home, he walked up and  down the street several times, and,
eking out his leisure until  evening, dined late at a certain angular little
tavern in the City, with a public parlour like a wedge, to which glazed hats
much  resorted. The  Captain's principal intention was to pass Sol  Gills's,
after dark,  and  look in through the window: which he did, The parlour door
stood open,  and he  could see his old friend writing busily and steadily at
the table within, while the little  Midshipman, already  sheltered from  the
night dews, watched him  from the counter; under which Rob  the Grinder made
his own bed, preparatory to shutting the shop. Reassured by the tranquillity
that reigned within the precincts of the wooden mariner, the  Captain headed
for Brig Place, resolving to weigh anchor betimes in the morning.

        CHAPTER 24.
     The Study of a Loving Heart

     Sir  Barnet and Lady  Skettles, very good people,  resided  in a pretty
villa at  Fulham,  on  the banks of  the Thames; which was one of  the  most
desirable residences in  the world when a rowing-match happened to  be going
past, but had its little inconveniences at  other times,  among which may be
enumerated the occasional  appearance of the river in  the drawing-room, and
the contemporaneous disappearance of the lawn and shrubbery.
     Sir  Barnet Skettles expressed his personal consequence chiefly through
an antique gold snuffbox, and a ponderous silk pocket-kerchief, which he had
an imposing manner of drawing out of his pocket like a banner and using with
both hands at once. Sir Barnet's object in life was constantly to extend the
range of  his acquaintance. Like a heavy  body dropped  into  water - not to
disparage so worthy  a gentleman by the comparison - it was in the nature of
things that Sir Barnet must spread an  ever widening circle about him, until
there  was no  room  left. Or, like a sound in air, the  vibration of which,
according to the speculation of an ingenious  modern philosopher, may  go on
travelling for ever  through the  interminable fields of space, nothing  but
coming to the end of his moral tether could stop  Sir Barnet Skettles in his
voyage of discovery through the social system.
     Sir Barnet  was proud of making people acquainted with people. He liked
the thing for its own sake, and it  advanced his  favourite object too.  For
example, if Sir Barnet had the good fortune to get hold of a law recruit, or
a country  gentleman, and ensnared him  to his hospitable villa, Sir  Barnet
would say to him, on the morning after his arrival,  'Now, my  dear  Sir, is
there  anybody you would like to know? Who is there you would wish  to meet?
Do you take any  interest in writing people,  or in  painting or sculpturing
people, or  in  acting  people, or in  anything of that  sort?' Possibly the
patient answered yes, and mentioned somebody, of whom Sir Barnet had no more
personal knowledge  than  of  Ptolemy  the Great. Sir  Barnet replied,  that
nothing on earth was easier, as he knew him very well: immediately called on
the aforesaid somebody, left his card,  wrote a short note, - 'My dear Sir -
penalty  of your eminent position - friend at my house  naturally desirous -
Lady Skettles and  myself participate - trust that  genius being superior to
ceremonies,  you  will  do  us  the  distinguished favour  of giving us  the
pleasure,' etc, etc. - and so killed a brace of birds  with  one stone, dead
as door-nails.
     With  the  snuff-box  and  banner  in full force, Sir  Barnet  Skettles
propounded his usual inquiry to Florence on the first  morning of her visit.
When Florence thanked him, and said there was no one in particular whom  she
desired  to see, it was natural she  should think with a pang, of poor  lost
Walter. When Sir Barnet Skettles, urging his kind offer, said, 'My dear Miss
Dombey, are you sure you can remember no one whom your good Papa - to whom I
beg you  present  the  best compliments of myself and Lady Skettles when you
write - might wish you to know?' it was natural, perhaps, that her poor head
should  droop a  little,  and that  her voice should  tremble  as it  softly
answered in the negative.
     Skettles Junior, much stiffened as to his cravat, and  sobered down  as
to his  spirits' was at home for the holidays, and appeared  to feel himself
aggrieved  by  the  solicitude  of  his excellent  mother  that he should be
attentive to Florence. Another and a deeper  injury under which the soul  of
young Barnet chafed, was  the company of Dr  and  Mrs Blimber, who had  been
invited  on  a  visit  to the  paternal  roof-tree, and  of  whom the  young
gentleman often said he would have  preferred their passing  the vacation at
Jericho.
     'Is there anybody you can suggest now, Doctor Blimber?' said Sir Barnet
Skettles, turning to that gentleman.
     'You are very kind, Sir Barnet,' returned  Doctor Blimber. 'Really I am
not  aware that there  is,  in particular. I  like to  know my fellow-men in
general,  Sir  Barnet. What does Terence say? Anyone who  is the parent of a
son is interesting to me.
     'Has Mrs  Blimber any  wish  to see any remarkable  person?' asked  Sir
Barnet, courteously.
     Mrs Blimber replied,  with a  sweet smile  and a shake of  her sky-blue
cap, that if Sir Barnet could have made her  known to Cicero, she would have
troubled him; but such an  introduction not  being feasible, and she already
enjoying the friendship of himself and his amiable lady, and possessing with
the Doctor her husband their joint confidence in regard to  their dear son -
here young Barnet was observed to curl his nose - she asked no more.
     Sir Barnet was fain, under these circumstances,  to content himself for
the  time with the company assembled. Florence was glad of that; for she had
a  study to pursue among  them, and it lay too near her heart, and  was  too
precious and momentous, to yield to any other interest.
     There  were some children  staying in  the house. Children who  were as
frank  and happy with fathers and with mothers as  those rosy faces opposite
home. Children who  had  no restraint upon their love. and freely showed it.
Florence sought to learn their secret; sought to find out what  it  was  she
had missed; what simple  art they knew, and  she knew  not; how she could be
taught by  them  to show her father that she loved him, and  to win his love
again.
     Many a  day did Florence thoughtfully observe these children. On many a
bright morning did she leave her bed when the glorious sun rose, and walking
up and down upon the river's bank' before anyone in the house  was stirring,
look up at the windows of their  rooms, and think of them, asleep, so gently
tended and affectionately thought of. Florence would feel  more lonely then,
than in the great house  all alone; and would think  sometimes that  she was
better there than  here, and  that there was greater peace in hiding herself
than in mingling with others of her age, and finding how unlike them all she
was. But attentive to her study, though it touched her to the quick at every
little leaf she turned  in the hard book, Florence remained among them,  and
tried with patient hope, to gain the knowledge that she wearied for.
     Ah! how to gain it! how  to know the charm in its beginning! There were
daughters here, who rose up in the  morning, and lay down to rest  at night,
possessed  of fathers' hearts  already. They had no  repulse to overcome, no
coldness to dread, no frown to smooth away. As the morning advanced, and the
windows opened one by one, and the dew began to dry upon the flowers and and
youthful feet began to  move upon  the lawn, Florence, glancing round at the
bright faces, thought what was there she could learn from these children? It
was too late to learn from them; each could approach  her father fearlessly,
and put up her lips to meet the ready kiss, and wind her arm  about the neck
that  bent  down to  caress her. She could  not begin by being  so bold. Oh!
could it be that there was less and less hope as she studied more and more!
     She remembered well, that even  the old woman who had robbed her when a
little child - whose image  and whose house,  and all she had said and done,
were stamped upon her recollection, with the enduring sharpness of a fearful
impression made at that  early period  of life  - had spoken  fondly of  her
daughter, and how terribly even she had  cried out in the  pain of  hopeless
separation from  her child But her own mother,  she would  think again, when
she  recalled  this, had loved her well. Then, sometimes, when  her thoughts
reverted swiftly to the void between herself  and her father, Florence would
tremble, and the tears would start upon her face, as she pictured to herself
her mother living on, and coming also to dislike her, because of her wanting
the  unknown  grace that should  conciliate  that father naturally, and  had
never done  so from her cradle  She knew that this imagination did wrong  to
her mother's memory, and had no truth in  it, or  base to rest upon; and yet
she tried so hard  to justify him, and to find the  whole blame in  herself,
that  she  could not resist  its passing,  like a  wild  cloud,  through the
distance of her mind.
     There came among the other visitors, soon after Florence, one beautiful
girl, three or four years younger than she, who was an orphan child, and who
was accompanied by her aunt, a grey-haired lady, who spoke much to Florence,
and  who greatly  liked  (but  that  they all did) to hear  her sing  of  an
evening, and would always sit near her at that time, with motherly interest.
They had only been two days in the house,  when Florence, being in an arbour
in the garden one warm morning, musingly observant  of a youthful group upon
the  turf,  through some intervening boughs, - and wreathing flowers for the
head of one little creature among  them who was the pet and plaything of the
rest, heard this same lady and her niece, in pacing up  and down a sheltered
nook close by, speak of herself.
     'Is Florence an orphan like me, aunt?' said the child.
     'No, my love. She has no mother, but her father is living.'
     'Is  she  in  mourning  for her  poor  Mama,  now?' inquired  the child
quickly.
     'No; for her only brother.'
     'Has she no other brother?'
     'None.'
     'No sister?'
     'None,'
     'I am very, very sorry!' said the little girL
     As they  stopped  soon afterwards  to watch  some  boats, and had  been
silent in the meantime, Florence, who had risen when she heard her name, and
had gathered up her flowers to go and meet them, that they might know of her
being within hearing, resumed her seat and work, expecting to  hear no more;
but the conversation recommenced next moment.
     'Florence is  a favourite with everyone here, and deserves  to be, I am
sure,' said the child, earnestly. 'Where is her Papa?'
     The  aunt replied, after a  moment's pause, that she did  not know. Her
tone of voice arrested Florence, who had started  from  her seat  again; and
held her fastened to the spot, with her work hastily caught up to her bosom,
and her two hands saving it from being scattered on the ground.
     'He is in England, I hope, aunt?' said the child.
     'I believe so. Yes; I know he is, indeed.'
     'Has he ever been here?'
     'I believe not. No.'
     'Is he coming here to see her?'
     'I believe not.
     'Is he lame, or blind, or ill, aunt?' asked the child.
     The flowers that  Florence held to  her breast  began to  fall when she
heard those words,  so  wonderingly spoke She held them closer; and her face
hung down upon them'
     'Kate,'  said the lady,  after another moment of silence, 'I will  tell
you the whole truth about Florence as I have heard it, and believe it to be.
Tell no one  else, my dear, because  it may  be little known here, and  your
doing so would give her pain.'
     'I never will!' exclaimed the child.
     'I know you never will,' returned the lady. 'I can trust you as myself.
I  fear then, Kate, that Florence's father cares little for her, very seldom
sees her, never was kind to her in  her  life, and  now  quite shuns her and
avoids her. She would love  him dearly if he would suffer  her, but  he will
not - though for no fault of hers; and she is greatly to be loved and pitied
by all gentle hearts.'
     More of the flowers that Florence held fell scattering  on the  ground;
those that remained  were wet, but not with dew;  and  her face dropped upon
her laden hands.
     'Poor Florence! Dear, good Florence!' cried the child.
     'Do you know why I have told you this, Kate?' said the lady.
     'That I may be very kind to her, and take great care  to try to  please
her. Is that the reason, aunt?'
     'Partly,' said  the lady, 'but not all. Though we see  her so cheerful;
with a pleasant smile for everyone; ready  to oblige us all, and bearing her
part  in every amusement  here: she can  hardly be quite happy, do you think
she can, Kate?'
     'I am afraid not,' said the little girl.
     'And you  can understand,' pursued  the lady, 'why her  observation  of
children who have parents who are  fond  of them, and  proud of them  - like
many here, just now - should make her sorrowful in secret?'
     'Yes,  dear aunt,' said the  child, 'I understand that very  well. Poor
Florence!'
     More  flowers strayed upon the ground, and those  she yet  held to  her
breast trembled as if a wintry wind were rustling them.
     'My Kate,' said the  lady, whose voice  was  serious, but very calm and
sweet,  and had so impressed Florence  from the first moment of  her hearing
it,  'of all  the  youthful  people here, you are  her  natural and harmless
friend; you have not the innocent means, that happier children have - '
     'There are  none happier, aunt!'  exclaimed  the child,  who seemed  to
cling about her.
     'As other children have, dear Kate, of reminding her of her misfortune.
Therefore I would have  you, when you  try to be her little friend,  try all
the  more  for  that, and feel  that  the  bereavement you sustained - thank
Heaven!  before you  knew its weight- gives  you  claim  and hold  upon poor
Florence.'
     'But I  am not without  a parent's love, aunt, and I  never have been,'
said the child, 'with you.'
     'However that may be, my dear,'  returned the lady, 'your misfortune is
a lighter one than Florence's; for not an orphan in the wide world can be so
deserted as the child who is an outcast from a living parent's love.'
     The  flowers were  scattered on the ground  like dust; the  empty hands
were spread upon  the face; and  orphaned Florence, shrinking down  upon the
ground, wept long and bitterly.
     But true of heart and resolute in her good purpose, Florence held to it
as her dying mother held by her upon the day that gave Paul life. He did not
know  how much  she loved him. However long the  time in coming, and however
slow  the interval, she  must  try  to bring that knowledge to  her father's
heart one day or other. Meantime she must be careful in no thoughtless word,
or look,  or  burst  of  feeling  awakened by  any chance  circumstance,  to
complain  against him,  or  to give  occasion  for  these  whispers  to  his
prejudice.
     Even  in the  response  she  made the  orphan child,  to whom  she  was
attracted strongly, and whom she had such occasion to remember, Florence was
mindful of him' If she singled her out too plainly  (Florence  thought) from
among the rest, she would confirm - in one mind certainly: perhaps in more -
the belief that he was cruel  and unnatural. Her  own delight was no set-off
to this, 'What she had overheard was a reason, not for soothing herself, but
for saving him; and Florence did it, in pursuance of the study of her heart.
     She did so always. If a book were  read  aloud, and there were anything
in  the  story that  pointed at an unkind father, she was in pain for  their
application  of  it to  him; not  for herself.  So  with  any  trifle of  an
interlude  that  was acted, or  picture  that was shown,  or  game  that was
played,  among them. The occasions for such  tenderness towards him were  so
many, that her mind misgave her often, it would indeed be better to  go back
to  the old house, and  live  again  within  the shadow  of its dull  walls,
undisturbed. How few who saw sweet Florence, in her spring of womanhood, the
modest little queen of  those  small revels, imagined what a  load of sacred
care lay heavy in her breast! How few of those who stiffened in her father's
freezing atmosphere, suspected what a heap of fiery coals was piled upon his
head!
     Florence pursued  her study  patiently, and,  failing  to  acquire  the
secret of the nameless grace she sought, among the youthful company who were
assembled  in the house, often walked out alone, in the early morning, among
the children of the poor. But still she found them  all too far advanced  to
learn from. They had won their household places  long ago, and did not stand
without, as she did, with a bar across the door.
     There  was  one man whom she several times observed at work very early,
and often with a girl of about  her own age  seated near him' He was a  very
poor  man,  who seemed to  have no regular  employment, but now went roaming
about the banks of the river when the tide was low, looking out for bits and
scraps  in the  mud;  and  now worked  at  the unpromising  little patch  of
garden-ground  before his  cottage; and now tinkered up a miserable old boat
that  belonged  to  him;  or  did  some job of that kind for a neighbour, as
chance occurred. Whatever the man's labour, the girl was never employed; but
sat, when she was with him, in a listless, moping state, and idle.
     Florence had often wished to speak to this man; yet she had never taken
courage  to do so, as he made no  movement towards her. But one morning when
she happened to come upon him  suddenly, from a by-path  among  some pollard
willows which  terminated  in the little shelving piece of stony ground that
lay between his dwelling and the water, where he was bending  over a fire he
had  made to caulk the old boat which was lying bottom upwards, close by, he
raised his head at the sound of her footstep, and gave her Good morning.
     'Good morning,' said Florence,  approaching  nearer,  'you are  at work
early.'
     'I'd be glad to be often at work earlier, Miss, if I had work to do.'
     'Is it so hard to get?' asked Florence.
     'I find it so,' replied the man.
     Florence  glanced  to where  the girl was sitting, drawn together, with
her elbows on her knees, and her chin on her hands, and said:
     'Is that your daughter?'
     He  raised  his head  quickly,  and  looking  towards  the  girl with a
brightened  face, nodded to her, and said 'Yes,' Florence looked towards her
too, and  gave her a kind salutation; the girl muttered something in return,
ungraciously and sullenly.
     'Is she in want of employment also?' said Florence.
     The man shook his head. 'No, Miss,' he said. 'I work for both,'
     'Are there only you two, then?' inquired Florence.
     'Only us two,' said the  man. 'Her mother his been dead these ten year.
Martha!' lifted up  his head again, and whistled to  her)  'won't you say  a
word to the pretty young lady?'
     The girl made  an impatient  gesture with  her cowering shoulders,  and
turned her head  another  way.  Ugly, misshapen,  peevish,  ill-conditioned,
ragged, dirty - but beloved!  Oh  yes! Florence  had seen her  father's look
towards her, and she knew whose look it had no likeness to.
     'I'm  afraid  she's  worse  this morning, my poor girl!' said  the man,
suspending  his  work,  and  contemplating  his  ill-favoured child,  with a
compassion that was the more tender for being rougher.
     'She is ill, then!' said Florence,
     The man drew  a deep sigh 'I  don't believe my Martha's  had five short
days'  good health,' he  answered, looking  at her  still, 'in  as many long
years'
     'Ay! and more than that, John,' said  a neighbour, who had come down to
help him with the boat.
     'More than that, you  say, do you?' cried the  other, pushing back  his
battered hat, and drawing his hand across his forehead. 'Very like. It seems
a long, long time.'
     'And  the more  the time,' pursued  the  neighbour,  'the  more  you've
favoured and humoured her, John, till  she's got to be a burden to  herself,
and everybody else'
     'Not to me,' said her father, falling to his work. 'Not to me.'
     Florence  could feel -  who better? - how truly  he spoke.  She  drew a
little closer to him, and would have been glad to touch his rugged hand, and
thank him for his goodness  to the miserable object that he looked upon with
eyes so different from any other man's.
     'Who would favour my  poor girl - to call it favouring -  if I didn't?'
said the father.
     'Ay,  ay,'  cried the  neighbour.  'In reason,  John. But you! You  rob
yourself to give to her. You bind yourself hand and foot on her account. You
make your life miserable along of her. And what  does  she  care!  You don't
believe she knows it?'
     The father lifted up his head again, and  whistled to her.  Martha made
the same impatient  gesture  with her crouching shoulders, in  reply; and he
was glad and happy.
     'Only for that, Miss,' said the neighbour, with a smile, in which there
was  more of secret sympathy than he expressed; 'only to get  that, he never
lets her out of his sight!'
     'Because the day'll  come, and  has been coming a long while,' observed
the other,  bending  low over his work, 'when  to get half as much from that
unfort'nate child of mine - to  get the trembling of a finger, or the waving
of a hair - would be to raise the dead.'
     Florence softly put some money  near his hand on the old boat, and left
him.
     And now Florence  began to think, if she  were to fall ill, if she were
to fade like her dear brother, would  he then know that she had  loved  him;
would  she then grow dear to him; would he come to her bedside, when she was
weak and dim of  sight,  and take her into  his embrace, and  cancel all the
past? Would  he  so forgive her, in that changed condition, for  not  having
been able  to lay open her  childish  heart  to him, as to make  it easy  to
relate with what  emotions she had gone out of his room that night; what she
had  meant to say if she had had the courage;  and  how she had endeavoured,
afterwards, to learn the way she never knew in infancy?
     Yes, she thought if she were dying, he  would relent. She thought, that
if she  lay, serene  and  not unwilling to depart,  upon  the  bed that  was
curtained round with recollections of their darling boy, he would be touched
home, and  would say, 'Dear  Florence, live  for me, and  we will  love each
other as we might have done, and  be as happy as  we  might have  been these
many years!' She thought that if she  heard such words from him, and had her
arms clasped round him' she  could answer with a smile, 'It is  too late for
anything but this; I never could be happier, dear father!' and so leave him,
with a blessing on her lips.
     The golden water she remembered on  the wall, appeared to  Florence, in
the light of such reflections,  only as a current flowing on to rest, and to
a  region where the dear  ones, gone before, were waiting, hand in hand; and
often when  she  looked  upon the darker  river  rippling at  her  feet, she
thought with awful wonder, but  not terror, of that river which her  brother
had so often said was bearing him away.
     The father and  his sick daughter  were  yet fresh in  Florence's mind,
and,  indeed, that incident was not a week old, when Sir Barnet and his lady
going out walking  in the  lanes one afternoon, proposed to her to bear them
company. Florence readily consenting, Lady Skettles ordered out young Barnet
as a  matter of  course.  For  nothing delighted Lady  Skettles so  much, as
beholding her eldest son with Florence on his arm.
     Barnet,  to say the truth, appeared to  entertain an opposite sentiment
on the subject, and on  such occasions frequently expressed himself audibly,
though indefinitely, in reference to 'a parcel of girls.' As it was not easy
to ruffle her sweet temper, however, Florence generally reconciled the young
gentleman to his  fate after a few minutes, and  they strolled on  amicably:
Lady Skettles and  Sir  Barnet following, in a state  of perfect complacency
and high gratification.
     This  was  the order  of  procedure on  the  afternoon in question; and
Florence  had  almost  succeeded in  overruling  the present  objections  of
Skettles Junior to  his destiny, when a gentleman on  horseback  came riding
by, looked at them earnestly as he passed, drew  in his rein, wheeled round,
and came riding back again, hat in hand.
     The gentleman had looked particularly at  Florence; and when the little
party  stopped,  on  his riding back, he bowed  to her, before  saluting Sir
Barnet  and his lady. Florence had no  remembrance of  having ever seen him,
but she started involuntarily when he came near her, and drew back.
     'My horse is perfectly quiet, I assure you,' said the gentleman.
     It was  not  that, but something  in  the gentleman  himself - Florence
could not have said what - that made her recoil as if she had been stung.
     'I  have  the  honour to  address  Miss  Dombey, I  believe?'  said the
gentleman, with a most persuasive smile. On Florence  inclining her head, he
added, 'My  name  is  Carker.  I  can hardly hope  to be remembered by  Miss
Dombey, except by name. Carker.'
     Florence,  sensible of a strange inclination to shiver, though  the day
was  hot,  presented  him to  her  host and  hostess;  by whom  he was  very
graciously received.
     'I beg pardon,' said Mr Carker,  'a thousand times! But I am going down
tomorrow morning to Mr Dombey, at Leamington, and if Miss Dombey can entrust
me with any commission, need I say how very happy I shall be?'
     Sir  Barnet immediately divining  that Florence would desire to write a
letter to  her father, proposed  to return, and besought  Mr Carker to  come
home and dine in his riding gear. Mr Carker had the misfortune to be engaged
to  dinner, but if  Miss  Dombey wished to write, nothing would delight  him
more than to accompany them back, and to be her faithful slave in waiting as
long as  she pleased. As he  said this  with his widest smile, and bent down
close to her to pat his horse's neck, Florence meeting his eyes, saw, rather
than heard him say, 'There is no news of the ship!'
     Confused, frightened, shrinking from him, and not even sure that he had
said  those words, for  he  seemed  to  have  shown  them  to  her  in  some
extraordinary manner through his smile, instead  of uttering them,  Florence
faintly said that she was  obliged to him, but she  would not write; she had
nothing to say.
     'Nothing to send, Miss Dombey?' said the man of teeth.
     'Nothing,' said Florence, 'but my - but my dear love- if you please.'
     Disturbed  as Florence  was,  she raised her eyes  to  his face with an
imploring and expressive look, that plainly besought him, if he knew - which
he as plainly  did -  that  any message  between  her  and her father was an
uncommon charge,  but  that one most of all, to  spare her. Mr Carker smiled
and bowed low, and being charged by Sir Barnet  with the best compliments of
himself  and  Lady  Skettles,  took  his  leave, and  rode  away: leaving  a
favourable impression on that worthy couple. Florence was seized with such a
shudder  as  he  went,  that Sir Barnet, adopting the  popular superstition,
supposed somebody was passing over her grave. Mr Carker turning a corner, on
the instant, looked back,  and bowed, and disappeared, as if he rode  off to
the churchyard straight, to do it.

        CHAPTER 25.
     Strange News of Uncle Sol

     Captain  Cuttle, though no sluggard, did not turn out so early  on  the
morning after he had seen Sol Gills, through the shop-window, writing in the
parlour, with the Midshipman upon the counter, and Rob the Grinder making up
his bed below it, but that the clocks struck six as he raised himself on his
elbow, and took a survey of his little chamber. The Captain's eyes must have
done  severe duty, if he  usually opened  them as wide on  awaking as he did
that morning;  and were  but  roughly rewarded for  their  vigilance,  if he
generally rubbed them half as hard. But the occasion was no  common one, for
Rob the Grinder had certainly never stood in the doorway of Captain Cuttle's
room before, and in it he stood then, panting at the Captain, with a flushed
and touzled air of Bed  about him, that  greatly heightened both  his colour
and expression.
     'Holloa!' roared the Captain. 'What's the matter?'
     Before  Rob could stammer a  word in answer, Captain Cuttle turned out,
all in a heap, and covered the boy's mouth with his hand.
     'Steady, my lad,' said  the Captain, 'don't ye speak a  word to  me  as
yet!'
     The Captain, looking  at  his  visitor in  great consternation,  gently
shouldered  him into the next  room, after laying this  injunction upon him;
and disappearing for  a few  moments, forthwith returned  in  the blue suit.
Holding up his  hand in token of  the injunction not  yet  being  taken off,
Captain Cuttle walked up to the cupboard, and poured  himself out  a dram; a
counterpart of which he  handed to  the messenger.  The  Captain then  stood
himself up in a corner, against the wall, as if to forestall the possibility
of being knocked backwards by the communication that was to be made to  him;
and having swallowed his  liquor, with his eyes fixed on the  messenger, and
his face as pale as his face could be, requested him to 'heave ahead.'
     'Do  you  mean, tell you, Captain?'  asked  Rob, who  had  been greatly
impressed by these precautions
     'Ay!' said the Captain.
     'Well, Sir,' said Rob, 'I ain't got much to tell. But look here!'
     Rob produced a bundle of keys. The  Captain surveyed  them, remained in
his corner, and surveyed the messenger.
     'And look here!' pursued Rob.
     The boy produced a sealed packet, which Captain  Cuttle stared at as he
had stared at the keys.
     'When I  woke  this morning,  Captain,'  said  Rob, 'which  was about a
quarter after  five, I  found these on my pillow. The shop-door was unbolted
and unlocked, and Mr Gills gone.'
     'Gone!' roared the Captain.
     'Flowed, Sir,' returned Rob.
     The  Captain's voice was so  tremendous, and he came out of  his corner
with  such way on him,  that Rob retreated before him  into  another corner:
holding out the keys and packet, to prevent himself from being run down.
     '"For Captain Cuttle," Sir,' cried Rob,  'is on the keys,  and  on  the
packet too. Upon my  word and honour, Captain Cuttle,  I don't know anything
more  about it.  I wish I may die if  I do! Here's a  sitiwation  for a  lad
that's just got a sitiwation,' cried the unfortunate  Grinder, screwing  his
cuff into his face: 'his master  bolted  with his place, and him blamed  for
it!'
     These lamentations had reference  to Captain Cuttle's  gaze, or  rather
glare, which was  full of vague suspicions, threatenings, and denunciations.
Taking the proffered packet from his hand, the Captain opened it and read as
follows:-
     'My dear Ned Cuttle.  Enclosed is my will!' The Captain turned it over,
with a doubtful  look -  'and Testament - Where's  the  Testament?' said the
Captain,  instantly impeaching the ill-fated Grinder.  'What  have you  done
with that, my lad?'
     'I never see it,' whimpered Rob.  'Don't keep on suspecting an innocent
lad, Captain. I never touched the Testament.'
     Captain  Cuttle shook  his head,  implying  that somebody  must be made
answerable for it; and gravely proceeded:
     'Which  don't  break  open  for  a  year,  or until you  have  decisive
intelligence  of  my  dear Walter, who is dear to you, Ned, too, I am sure.'
The  Captain  paused  and  shook  his head  in  some  emotion;  then,  as  a
re-establishment  of  his  dignity  in  this  trying  position, looked  with
exceeding sternness at the Grinder. 'If you  should never hear of me, or see
me more, Ned, remember an old friend as he will remember  you to  the last -
kindly; and at least until  the period I have mentioned  has expired, keep a
home in the old place for Walter. There are no debts, the loan from Dombey's
House is paid  off  and all my  keys I  send with this. Keep this quiet, and
make no inquiry for me; it is useless. So no more,  dear Ned, from your true
friend, Solomon  Gills.' The Captain took a long breath, and then read these
words written below:  '"The boy  Rob, well recommended, as I told  you, from
Dombey's House.  If all else should  come to the hammer,  take care, Ned, of
the little Midshipman."'
     To  convey to posterity any idea  of  the manner in  which the Captain,
after turning this letter over  and over, and  reading it  a score of times,
sat down in his chair,  and held  a court-martial on  the subject in his own
mind, would require the united genius of all the great  men, who, discarding
their own untoward days, have determined to go down to  posterity,  and have
never got there. At first the Captain was too much confounded and distressed
to think of anything but the letter itself; and even when his thoughts began
to  glance  upon the various attendant facts, they  might, perhaps,  as well
have  occupied  themselves with  their  former theme,  for  any  light  they
reflected on them. In this state of mind,  Captain Cuttle having the Grinder
before  the  court, and no  one  else,  found it  a great  relief to decide,
generally, that he was  an object of suspicion: which the Captain so clearly
expressed in his visage, that Rob remonstrated.
     'Oh, don't, Captain!'  cried  the Grinder.  'I wonder how you can! what
have I done to be looked at, like that?'
     'My lad,' said Captain  Cuttle, 'don't you sing out  afore you're hurt.
And don't you commit yourself, whatever you do.'
     'I haven't been and committed nothing, Captain!' answered Rob.
     'Keep her free, then,' said the Captain, impressively, 'and ride easy.
     With  a deep sense  of  the  responsibility imposed upon  him' and  the
necessity of thoroughly fathoming this mysterious affair  as became a man in
his  relations with  the parties, Captain Cuttle  resolved  to  go down  and
examine the premises, and to  keep the  Grinder with  him.  Considering that
youth as  under arrest  at present, the Captain was in some doubt whether it
might  not be expedient  to  handcuff  him, or  tie his  ankles together, or
attach  a weight to his legs; but not being clear as to the legality of such
formalities,  the Captain decided merely to hold him by the shoulder all the
way, and knock him down if he made any objection.
     However, he made none, and consequently got  to  the Instrument-maker's
house  without  being  placed under  any more  stringent restraint.  As  the
shutters were not yet taken down, the Captain's first care  was to  have the
shop opened; and  when the daylight was freely admitted, he proceeded,  with
its aid, to further investigation.
     The Captain's first  care  was to  establish himself  in a chair in the
shop,  as President of the solemn tribunal that was sitting within him;  and
to require Rob to lie down in his bed  under the counter, show exactly where
he discovered  the keys and packet when he awoke, how he found the door when
he went to try it, how he started off to  Brig Place - cautiously preventing
the latter imitation from being carried farther than  the threshold - and so
on to the end of the chapter. When all this had been done several times, the
Captain shook his head and seemed to think the matter had a bad look.
     Next,  the  Captain,  with some  indistinct idea  of  finding  a  body,
instituted a strict search over the whole house; groping in the cellars with
a lighted candle, thrusting his  hook behind  doors, bringing his head  into
violent contact with  beams, and covering himself  with cobwebs. Mounting up
to the  old man's bed-room, they  found that he had  not been in bed on  the
previous  night, but  had merely lain  down on the coverlet,  as was evident
from the impression yet remaining there.
     'And I think, Captain,' said Rob, looking round the room, 'that when Mr
Gills  was  going  in  and out so often, these last  few days, he was taking
little things away, piecemeal, not to attract attention.'
     'Ay!' said the Captain, mysteriously. 'Why so, my lad?'
     'Why,'  returned  Rob, looking about, 'I don't see his  shaving tackle.
Nor his brushes, Captain. Nor no shirts. Nor yet his shoes.'
     As each of these articles was mentioned, Captain Cuttle took particular
notice of the corresponding department of the Grinder, lest he should appear
to  have  been in recent  use, or should  prove  to be in present possession
thereof. But Rob  had no occasion to  shave,  was not brushed, and  wore the
clothes he had on for a long time past, beyond all possibility of a mistake.
     'And what should you say,' said the Captain  - 'not committing yourself
- about his time of sheering off? Hey?'
     'Why, I think, Captain,' returned Rob,  'that he must  have gone pretty
soon after I began to snore.'
     'What  o'clock  was  that?'  said  the  Captain, prepared  to  be  very
particular about the exact time.
     'How can I tell, Captain!'  answered Rob. 'I only know that I'm a heavy
sleeper at first, and a light one  towards morning; and if Mr Gills had come
through the  shop near  daybreak,  though ever so much on tiptoe, I'm pretty
sure I should have heard him shut the door at all events.
     On mature consideration of this evidence, Captain Cuttle began to think
that  the Instrument-maker must  have vanished of his own  accord;  to which
logical conclusion  he was assisted  by  the  letter  addressed  to himself,
which, as being undeniably in the old man's handwriting, would seem, with no
great forcing, to bear the construction, that he arranged of his own will to
go, and so went.  The  Captain had  next to consider where and  why?  and as
there  was  no  way whatsoever  that  he saw  to  the solution of  the first
difficulty, he confined his meditations to the second.
     Remembering the old man's curious manner, and the farewell he had taken
of  him; unaccountably fervent at the  time, but  quite intelligible  now: a
terrible apprehension strengthened on  the Captain, that, overpowered by his
anxieties  and  regrets for Walter, he  had been driven  to commit  suicide.
Unequal to  the  wear and tear of  daily  life,  as  he  had often professed
himself to be, and shaken as he no doubt was by the uncertainty and deferred
hope  he had undergone, it seemed  no violently strained misgiving, but only
too probable. Free from debt,  and with no fear for his personal liberty, or
the seizure of his goods, what else but such a  state of madness  could have
hurried  him away alone and secretly? As to his carrying some  apparel  with
him, if he had really  done  so - and  they  were not even sure of that - he
might  have done so, the Captain  argued,  to  prevent inquiry, to  distract
attention from  his probable  fate, or to ease the  very mind  that  was now
revolving  all these  possibilities. Such, reduced into plain language,  and
condensed  within a small  compass, was  the final  result and substance  of
Captain Cuttle's  deliberations:  which took  a long time to  arrive at this
pass, and  were, like some more public  deliberations,  very discursive  and
disorderly.
     Dejected and despondent in  the extreme, Captain Cuttle felt it just to
release Rob from the arrest in which he had  placed him, and to enlarge him,
subject  to  a kind of  honourable  inspection  which he  still  resolved to
exercise;  and  having  hired a man, from Brogley the  Broker, to sit in the
shop during  their absence, the Captain, taking  Rob with  him, issued forth
upon a dismal quest after the mortal remains of Solomon Gills.
     Not a  station-house, or bone-house, or  work-house  in the  metropolis
escaped a visitation from  the hard glazed hat. Along the wharves, among the
shipping on  the  bank-side,  up  the  river,  down  the river, here, there,
everywhere, it went gleaming where men were thickest, like the hero's helmet
in an epic battle. For a whole  week the Captain read of all  the  found and
missing  people  in all  the newspapers and  handbills,  and went  forth  on
expeditions  at  all hours of the  day  to  identify Solomon Gills,  in poor
little ship-boys who had fallen overboard, and in  tall foreigners with dark
beards who had taken poison - 'to make  sure,' Captain Cuttle said, 'that it
wam't him.' It is a  sure thing that it never was, and that the good Captain
had no other satisfaction.
     Captain Cuttle at last abandoned these  attempts as hopeless,  and  set
himself to consider what  was to be done next. After several new perusals of
his poor friend's  letter, he considered that the  maintenance of' a home in
the old place for Walter' was  the primary duty imposed upon him. Therefore,
the Captain's decision was, that  he would keep  house  on the  premises  of
Solomon  Gills himself, and would  go into the instrument-business, and  see
what came of it.
     But as this step involved the relinquishment  of  his apartments at Mrs
MacStinger's, and  he  knew  that resolute  woman  would never  hear  of his
deserting  them, the  Captain took the  desperate determination  of  running
away.
     'Now, look  ye here, my lad,' said  the Captain  to  Rob,  when  he had
matured this notable  scheme,  'to-morrow, I  shan't  be found in  this here
roadstead  till night - not till arter  midnight p'rhaps. But you keep watch
till you hear me knock, and the moment you do, turn-to, and open the door.'
     'Very good, Captain,' said Rob.
     'You'll continue to be rated on  these here books,' pursued the Captain
condescendingly, 'and I don't say but what you may get promotion, if you and
me  should  pull together with  a will.  But  the moment  you hear  me knock
to-morrow night,  whatever time it is, turn-to  and show yourself smart with
the door.'
     'I'll be sure to do it, Captain,' replied Rob.
     'Because you  understand,' resumed the  Captain,  coming back again  to
enforce this charge upon his mind, 'there may be,  for anything I can say, a
chase;  and I might be took while I was waiting, if you didn't show yourself
smart with the door.'
     Rob again assured the Captain that he would be prompt  and wakeful; and
the  Captain  having  made  this  prudent  arrangement,  went  home  to  Mrs
MacStinger's for the last time.
     The sense the Captain had of its being the  last time, and of the awful
purpose hidden beneath his  blue waistcoat, inspired  him with such a mortal
dread of Mrs MacStinger, that the  sound  of that lady's foot  downstairs at
any time of the day, was sufficient to throw him into a fit of trembling. It
fell out,  too, that Mrs  MacStinger was in  a  charming temper  - mild  and
placid  as a house- lamb;  and Captain Cuttle's conscience suffered terrible
twinges, when she came up to inquire if she could cook  him nothing  for his
dinner.
     'A nice small kidney-pudding  now,  Cap'en Cuttle,'  said his landlady:
'or a sheep's heart. Don't mind my trouble.'
     'No thank'ee, Ma'am,' returned the Captain.
     'Have a  roast fowl,' said Mrs MacStinger, 'with a bit of weal stuffing
and some egg sauce. Come, Cap'en Cuttle! Give yourself a little treat!'
     'No thank'ee, Ma'am,' returned the Captain very humbly.
     'I'm  sure you're out of sorts, and want to  be stimulated,'  said  Mrs
MacStinger. 'Why not have, for once in a way, a bottle of sherry wine?'
     'Well, Ma'am,' rejoined the Captain,  'if you'd  be  so good as take  a
glass or two, I  think I would try that. Would you do me the favour, Ma'am,'
said the  Captain, torn to pieces by his conscience, 'to accept  a quarter's
rent ahead?'
     'And  why so, Cap'en Cuttle?' retorted Mrs MacStinger - sharply, as the
Captain thought.
     The Captain was frightened to dead  'If you would  Ma'am,' he said with
submission, 'it would  oblige me. I  can't keep my money very well.  It pays
itself out. I should take it kind if you'd comply.'
     'Well, Cap'en  Cuttle,' said  the  unconscious MacStinger,  rubbing her
hands,  'you  can  do as  you please.  It's not for me, with my  family,  to
refuse, no more than it is to ask'
     'And would you, Ma'am,' said  the Captain, taking down the tin canister
in which he kept his cash' from the  top shelf of the cupboard, 'be so  good
as offer eighteen-pence a-piece to the little family all round? If you could
make it  convenient, Ma'am, to pass the  word presently for them children to
come for'ard, in a body, I should be glad to see 'em'
     These  innocent  MacStingers  were so many  daggers  to  the  Captain's
breast, when they appeared in  a  swarm, and tore at him with  the confiding
trustfulness he so little deserved. The eye of Alexander MacStinger, who had
been his favourite, was insupportable to the  Captain;  the voice of Juliana
MacStinger, who was the picture of her mother, made a coward of him.
     Captain Cuttle kept  up appearances, nevertheless, tolerably  well, and
for  an  hour or two was  very hardly used  and roughly handled by the young
MacStingers: who in their childish frolics,  did a little damage also to the
glazed hat, by sitting in it, two at  a time, as in  a nest, and drumming on
the inside of the crown  with their shoes. At length the Captain sorrowfully
dismissed them: taking leave of these cherubs with the poignant remorse  and
grief of a man who was going to execution.
     In the silence of night, the Captain packed up  his heavier property in
a chest,  which he locked, intending to leave  it  there, in all probability
for  ever, but on the forlorn chance  of one day finding  a man sufficiently
bold  and desperate to come and ask  for it. Of his lighter necessaries, the
Captain made  a bundle; and disposed  his plate  about his person, ready for
flight.  At the hour of midnight, when Brig Place was buried in slumber, and
Mrs  MacStinger  was lulled in sweet oblivion, with  her infants around her,
the guilty Captain, stealing  down on tiptoe, in the dark, opened the  door,
closed it softly after him, and took to his heels
     Pursued  by the image  of Mrs  MacStinger springing  out  of bed,  and,
regardless of  costume, following  and bringing him back;  pursued also by a
consciousness of his enormous crime; Captain Cuttle held on at a great pace,
and  allowed no  grass  to  grow  under his feet, between Brig Place and the
Instrument-maker's door. It  opened when  he knocked  - for  Rob was  on the
watch  - and  when it was bolted and locked behind him,  Captain Cuttle felt
comparatively safe.
     'Whew!' cried the Captain, looking round him. 'It's a breather!'
     'Nothing the matter, is there, Captain?' cried the gaping Rob.
     'No, no!' said Captain Cuttle, after  changing colour, and listening to
a passing footstep in the street. 'But mind ye, my  lad; if any lady, except
either of them two as you  see t'other day,  ever comes and  asks for Cap'en
Cuttle, be sure  to report no person  of that name known, nor never heard of
here; observe them orders, will you?'
     'I'll take care, Captain,' returned Rob.
     'You might say - if you liked,' hesitated the Captain, 'that you'd read
in the paper that a Cap'en of that name was gone to  Australia,  emigrating,
along with a whole  ship's  complement  of people as had all  swore never to
come back no more.
     Rob nodded his understanding of these instructions;  and Captain Cuttle
promising to make a man of him, if he obeyed orders, dismissed him, yawning,
to  his bed  under the counter,  and went aloft  to  the  chamber of Solomon
Gills.
     What the Captain suffered next day,  whenever  a bonnet  passed, or how
often he darted out of the  shop to  elude imaginary MacStingers, and sought
safety in the attic, cannot be told. But to avoid the  fatigues attendant on
this  means of self-preservation, the Captain  curtained the  glass  door of
communication between  the shop and parlour, on the inside; fitted a key  to
it from the bunch  that had been sent to him; and cut a small hole of espial
in  the  wall. The  advantage of this fortification is obvious. On  a bonnet
appearing, the Captain  instantly slipped into his  garrison, locked himself
up, and  took  a secret observation of the  enemy. Finding it a false alarm,
the Captain  instantly slipped out again. And the bonnets in the street were
so very numerous, and alarms were so inseparable from their appearance, that
the Captain was almost incessantly slipping in and out all day long.
     Captain  Cuttle  found time,  however,  in the midst of  this fatiguing
service to inspect the stock; in  connexion with which he  had  the  general
idea (very laborious to Rob) that too much  friction could  not be  bestowed
upon  it, and  that it could  not be made too bright. He also ticketed a few
attractive-looking  articles  at  a venture,  at  prices  ranging  from  ten
shillings  to fifty  pounds, and  exposed  them in the window  to  the great
astonishment of the public.
     After  effecting these improvements, Captain  Cuttle, surrounded by the
instruments, began to feel scientific: and looked up at  the stars at night,
through  the skylight,  when  he  was  smoking his pipe in the  little  back
parlour before going to bed, as if  he had established a kind of property in
them. As a tradesman in the City, too, he  began to have  an interest in the
Lord  Mayor, and  the Sheriffs, and in Public  Companies; and felt bound  to
read the  quotations of the  Funds every day, though  he was  unable to make
out, on any principle of navigation, what the figures meant,  and could have
very  well  dispensed with the fractions. Florence, the  Captain  waited on,
with his strange  news of Uncle Sol, immediately after taking possession  of
the Midshipman; but she was away from home. So the Captain  sat himself down
in his  altered station of  life,  with  no company but Rob the Grinder; and
losing  count of time, as  men do when great changes come upon them, thought
musingly  of  Walter,  and  of Solomon  Gills,  and  even of  Mrs MacStinger
herself, as among the things that had been.

        CHAPTER 26.
     Shadows of the Past and Future

     'Your most obedient, Sir,'  said the Major. 'Damme, Sir, a friend of my
friend Dombey's is a friend of mine, and I'm glad to see you!'
     'I  am infinitely  obliged,  Carker,'  explained  Mr Dombey, 'to  Major
Bagstock, for his company and conversation. 'Major Bagstock  has rendered me
great service, Carker.'
     Mr Carker  the Manager, hat in  hand, just  arrived at Leamington,  and
just introduced  to  the Major, showed the  Major his  whole double range of
teeth,  and  trusted he might take the liberty of thanking  him with all his
heart for having effected so  great an Improvement in Mr Dombey's  looks and
spirits'
     'By Gad, Sir,' said the  Major, in reply, 'there  are no thanks due  to
me,  for it's a give  and take affair.  A great  creature  like  our  friend
Dombey, Sir,'  said the Major, lowering  his voice,  but not lowering it  so
much as to render it inaudible to that gentleman, 'cannot help improving and
exalting  his  friends.  He  strengthens  and invigorates  a  man, Sir, does
Dombey, in his moral nature.'
     Mr Carker snapped at  the expression. In his moral nature. Exactly. The
very words he had been on the point of suggesting.
     'But when  my friend  Dombey, Sir,'  added the Major, 'talks to  you of
Major Bagstock, I must crave leave to set him and you right.  He means plain
Joe, Sir - Joey B.  - Josh. Bagstock - Joseph- rough and tough Old J.,  Sir.
At your service.'
     Mr Carker's excessively friendly inclinations towards the Major, and Mr
Carker's  admiration of his roughness, toughness, and plainness, gleamed out
of every tooth in Mr Carker's head.
     'And now,  Sir,' said the Major,  'you and Dombey have  the devil's own
amount of business to talk over.'
     'By no means, Major,' observed Mr Dombey.
     'Dombey,' said the Major, defiantly, 'I know better; a man of your mark
- the Colossus  of commerce -  is not to  be  interrupted. Your moments  are
precious. We shall meet at dinner-time. In the interval, old Joseph  will be
scarce. The dinner-hour is a sharp seven, Mr Carker.'
     With that, the Major,  greatly  swollen as  to his face,  withdrew; but
immediately putting in his head at the door again, said:
     'I beg your pardon. Dombey, have you any message to 'em?'
     Mr  Dombey  in some  embarrassment, and  not  without  a  glance at the
courteous keeper of his  business confidence, entrusted the  Major  with his
compliments.
     'By the Lord, Sir,' said the Major, 'you must  make it something warmer
than that, or old Joe will be far from welcome.'
     'Regards then, if you will, Major,' returned Mr Dombey.
     'Damme, Sir,'  said  the  Major,  shaking his  shoulders and his  great
cheeks jocularly: 'make it something warmer than that.'
     'What you please, then, Major,' observed Mr Dombey.
     'Our friend is  sly, Sir,  sly, Sir,  de-vilish sly,'  said  the Major,
staring  round the door at  Carker. 'So is Bagstock.'  But  stopping in  the
midst of  a chuckle, and  drawing himself up to  his  full height, the Major
solemnly exclaimed, as he struck himself on the chest, 'Dombey! I  envy your
feelings. God bless you!' and withdrew.
     'You  must have found the  gentleman  a great  resource,' said  Carker,
following him with his teeth.
     'Very great indeed,' said Mr Dombey.
     'He has friends here, no doubt,' pursued Carker. 'I perceive, from what
he has said, that you go into society here.  Do you know,' smiling horribly,
'I am so very glad that you go into society!'
     Mr Dombey  acknowledged  this display of  interest on  the part of  his
second in  command, by twirling his  watch-chain, and  slightly  moving  his
head.
     'You were formed for society,' said Carker. 'Of all the men I know, you
are the best adapted, by nature and by position,  for society. Do you know I
have  been frequently amazed that you should have held it at arm's length so
long!'
     'I have had my reasons, Carker.  I have  been alone, and indifferent to
it.  But you have great social  qualifications yourself,  and are  the  more
likely to have been surprised.'
     'Oh! I!' returned the other, with ready self-disparagement. 'It's quite
another  matter in the case of a man  like me.  I don't come into comparison
with you.'
     Mr  Dombey  put  his hand to his  neckcloth,  settled  his chin in  it,
coughed,  and  stood looking  at  his faithful friend  and servant for a few
moments in silence.
     'I shall have the  pleasure, Carker,'  said Mr Dombey at length: making
as if he swallowed something a little too large for  his throat: 'to present
you to my - to the Major's friends. Highly agreeable people.'
     'Ladies among them, I presume?' insinuated the smooth Manager.
     'They are all - that  is to  say, they  are both - ladies,' replied  Mr
Dombey.
     'Only two?' smiled Carker.
     'They are only two. I have confined my  visits  to their residence, and
have made no other acquaintance here.'
     'Sisters, perhaps?' quoth Carker.
     'Mother and daughter,' replied Mr Dombey.
     As Mr Dombey dropped his eyes,  and adjusted his  neckcloth  again, the
smiling  face of Mr Carker  the Manager  became in a moment, and without any
stage of  transition,  transformed  into  a most intent  and frowning  face,
scanning his closely,  and with an ugly sneer. As Mr Dombey raised his eyes,
it  changed  back, no less quickly, to its old  expression,  and  showed him
every gum of which it stood possessed.
     'You  are very kind,' said  Carker, 'I shall be delighted to know them.
Speaking of daughters, I have seen Miss Dombey.'
     There was a sudden rush of blood to Mr Dombey's face.
     'I took the liberty of waiting on her,' said Carker, 'to inquire if she
could charge me  with any little commission. I am  not so fortunate as to be
the bearer of any but her - but her dear love.'
     Wolf's face that it was then, with even the hot tongue revealing itself
through the stretched mouth, as the eyes encountered Mr Dombey's!
     'What business intelligence  is there?' inquired  the latter gentleman,
after  a  silence,  during  which Mr  Carker had produced some memoranda and
other papers.
     'There is very little,' returned Carker. 'Upon the  whole we  have  not
had our usual good fortune of late, but that is of little moment to  you. At
Lloyd's, they give up the Son and Heir for lost. Well, she was insured, from
her keel to her masthead.'
     'Carker,' said Mr Dombey, taking a chair  near him,  'I cannot say that
young man, Gay, ever impressed me favourably
     'Nor me,' interposed the Manager.
     'But I wish,' said Mr Dombey, without heeding the interruption, 'he had
never gone on board that ship. I wish he had never been sent out.
     'It is  a pity you didn't  say  so, in  good time, is it not?' retorted
Carker,  coolly.  'However, I  think it's all for the best. I really,  think
it's all for the best. Did I mention that  there was something like a little
confidence between Miss Dombey and myself?'
     'No,' said Mr Dombey, sternly.
     'I have no doubt,' returned Mr Carker, after an impressive pause, 'that
wherever  Gay is, he is much better where  he is,  than at home  here. If  I
were, or could be, in your place, I should be satisfied of that.  I am quite
satisfied  of it myself. Miss Dombey is confiding and young - perhaps hardly
proud enough, for your daughter - if she have a fault. Not that that is much
though, I am sure. Will you check these balances with me?'
     Mr Dombey leaned back in his chair,  instead of bending over the papers
that  were laid before him, and looked the Manager steadily in the face. The
Manager,  with his eyelids slightly raised, affected to be  glancing  at his
figures, and  to await  the  leisure of  his  principal.  He showed  that he
affected  this, as if from great  delicacy, and  with a design to  spare  Mr
Dombey's feelings; and the latter, as he looked at him, was cognizant of his
intended  consideration, and felt  that but for it, this confidential Carker
would have said a great deal more, which he, Mr Dombey, was too proud to ask
for. It was his way in  business, often. Little  by little, Mr Dombey's gaze
relaxed, and  his  attention  became diverted  to the papers before him; but
while busy with the occupation they afforded him, he frequently stopped, and
looked  at Mr Carker again. Whenever he did so, Mr Carker was demonstrative,
as  before,  in  his delicacy, and  impressed it on his great chief more and
more.
     While  they were  thus engaged; and under the skilful  culture  of  the
Manager, angry thoughts in reference to poor Florence brooded and bred in Mr
Dombey's  breast,  usurping  the place  of the  cold dislike that  generally
reigned there; Major Bagstock, much admired by the old ladies of Leamington,
and followed by the Native,  carrying  the  usual amount  of  light baggage,
straddled  along the shady side of the way, to  make  a morning  call on Mrs
Skewton. It  being midday when  the Major reached the bower of Cleopatra, he
had the  good fortune to find his  Princess on  her  usual sofa, languishing
over  a  cup  of coffee,  with the room so darkened and  shaded for her more
luxurious repose, that  Withers, who was in attendance on her, loomed like a
phantom page.
     'What insupportable creature  is this, coming in?' said Mrs Skewton, 'I
cannot hear it. Go away, whoever you are!'
     'You have not the heart to banish J. B., Ma'am!' said the Major halting
midway, to remonstrate, with his cane over his shoulder.
     'Oh it's you,  is  it?  On  second thoughts, you  may  enter,' observed
Cleopatra.
     The Major entered accordingly, and  advancing to  the sofa pressed  her
charming hand to his lips.
     'Sit down,' said Cleopatra, listlessly waving her fan, 'a long way off.
Don't come  too  near  me, for  I  am frightfully faint  and sensitive  this
morning, and you smell of the Sun. You are absolutely tropical.'
     'By  George,  Ma'am,'  said the  Major, 'the  time has been when Joseph
Bagstock  has been grilled and blistered by the Sun; then time was, when  he
was  forced, Ma'am, into such  full blow, by  high hothouse heat in the West
Indies,  that he was known as  the Flower. A man never  heard  of  Bagstock,
Ma'am, in  those days;  he  heard of the Flower -  the  Flower  of Ours. The
Flower may have faded,  more  or less, Ma'am,'  observed the Major, dropping
into a much nearer chair than had been indicated by his cruel Divinity, 'but
it is a tough plant yet, and constant as the evergreen.'
     Here  the Major, under  cover of the dark room, shut up one eye, rolled
his head like a Harlequin, and, in his great self-satisfaction, perhaps went
nearer to the confines of apoplexy than he had ever gone before.
     'Where is Mrs Granger?' inquired Cleopatra of her page.
     Withers believed she was in her own room.
     'Very well,' said  Mrs  Skewton. 'Go  away, and  shut  the  door. I  am
engaged.'
     As  Withers disappeared,  Mrs Skewton turned her head languidly towards
the Major, without otherwise moving, and asked him how his friend was.
     'Dombey,  Ma'am,' returned the Major, with a facetious gurgling  in his
throat, 'is  as well as a man  in  his condition can be.  His condition is a
desperate  one, Ma'am. He is touched, is Dombey! Touched!' cried  the Major.
'He is bayonetted through the body.'
     Cleopatra cast a sharp look at the Major, that contrasted forcibly with
the affected drawl in which she presently said:
     'Major Bagstock, although I know but  little of the world, - nor  can I
really regret  my experience,  for  I  fear  it  is  a  false place, full of
withering conventionalities: where Nature is but little regarded, and  where
the  music of the  heart, and the gushing  of the soul, and all that sort of
thing, which is so truly poetical, is seldom heard, - I cannot misunderstand
your meaning. There is an allusion to  Edith - to  my extremely dear child,'
said Mrs Skewton, tracing the outline of  her eyebrows with  her forefinger,
'in your words, to which the tenderest of chords vibrates excessively.'
     'Bluntness,   Ma'am,'   returned   the  Major,   'has  ever   been  the
characteristic of the Bagstock breed. You are right. Joe admits it.'
     'And that  allusion,' pursued Cleopatra, 'would involve one of the most
- if not positively the most - touching, and  thrilling, and sacred emotions
of which our sadly-fallen nature is susceptible, I conceive.'
     The Major laid  his hand upon his lips, and wafted a kiss to Cleopatra,
as if to identify the emotion in question.
     'I feel that I am weak.  I feel that I am wanting in that energy, which
should sustain a Mama: not to say  a parent:  on such a  subject,'  said Mrs
Skewton,  trimming her  lips with the laced edge of her pocket-handkerchief;
'but  I can hardly  approach  a topic so excessively momentous to my dearest
Edith  without a feeling  of faintness.  Nevertheless,  bad man, as you have
boldly remarked upon  it, and as  it has  occasioned me great anguish:'  Mrs
Skewton  touched  her left  side with her fan:  'I will not shrink  from  my
duty.'
     The Major, under cover of the dimness, swelled, and swelled, and rolled
his purple face about, and  winked his lobster eye, until he fell into a fit
of wheezing, which obliged  him  to rise and  take a  turn or  two about the
room, before his fair friend could proceed.
     'Mr Dombey,'  said  Mrs  Skewton,  when  she  at length  resumed,  'was
obliging enough, now  many weeks  ago,  to do  us the honour of  visiting us
here;  in company, my  dear Major, with yourself. I acknowledge - let  me be
open -  that it is my failing to be  the creature of impulse, and to wear my
heart as it were, outside. I know my failing full well. My enemy cannot know
it better.  But I  am  not penitent;  I would rather not  be  frozen by  the
heartless world, and am content to bear this imputation justly.'
     Mrs Skewton arranged her tucker, pinched her wiry  throat  to give it a
soft surface, and went on, with great complacency.
     'It  gave  me  (my dearest Edith too,  I am sure)  infinite pleasure to
receive Mr Dombey.  As a friend of  yours, my dear  Major, we were naturally
disposed to be prepossessed in his favour; and I fancied that I  observed an
amount of Heart in Mr Dombey, that was excessively refreshing.'
     'There is devilish little heart in Dombey now, Ma'am,' said the Major.
     'Wretched man!' cried Mrs Skewton,  looking at him languidly,  'pray be
silent.'
     'J. B. is dumb, Ma'am,' said the Major.
     'Mr Dombey,' pursued Cleopatra, smoothing the rosy hue upon her cheeks,
'accordingly repeated his visit; and possibly finding some attraction in the
simplicity and primitiveness of  our tastes - for there is always a charm in
nature  -  it is  so very  sweet - became  one of  our little  circle  every
evening. Little did I think of the awful responsibility into which I plunged
when I encouraged Mr Dombey - to -
     'To beat up these quarters, Ma'am,' suggested Major Bagstock.
     'Coarse person! 'said Mrs  Skewton,  'you anticipate my meaning, though
in odious language.
     Here Mrs Skewton rested her elbow on the little table at her side,  and
suffering her wrist to droop in what she considered a graceful  and becoming
manner,  dangled  her  fan to and  fro, and  lazily admired  her hand  while
speaking.
     'The agony I have endured,' she said mincingly, 'as  the  truth has  by
degrees dawned upon me, has been too exceedingly terrific to dilate upon. My
whole existence is bound up in my sweetest Edith; and to see her change from
day to  day  - my  beautiful  pet, who has positively garnered up her  heart
since  the death of that  most delightful  creature,  Granger -  is the most
affecting thing in the world.'
     Mrs Skewton's world was not a very trying one, if one might judge of it
by the  influence of its most affecting circumstance upon her;  but this  by
the way.
     'Edith,' simpered Mrs Skewton, 'who is the perfect pearl of my life, is
said to resemble me. I believe we are alike.'
     'There  is  one  man  in  the world  who never will  admit  that anyone
resembles  you, Ma'am,' said the  Major; 'and  that man's  name  is Old  Joe
Bagstock.'
     Cleopatra  made  as if she would brain the flatterer with her fan,  but
relenting, smiled upon him and proceeded:
     'If my charming girl inherits any advantages from me, wicked one!': the
Major  was  the  wicked one:  'she inherits also my foolish nature. She  has
great force of character - mine has been said to be immense,  though I don't
believe  it - but  once moved,  she is susceptible and sensitive to the last
extent. What are my feelings when I see her pining! They destroy me.
     The Major advancing his  double chin, and pursing up his blue lips into
a soothing expression, affected the profoundest sympathy.
     'The confidence,' said  Mrs Skewton,  'that has subsisted between us  -
the free development of  soul, and openness of  sentiment -  is  touching to
think of. We have been more like sisters than Mama and child.'
     'J. B.'s own sentiment,' observed the Major, 'expressed by  J. B. fifty
thousand times!'
     'Do not interrupt,  rude man!' said  Cleopatra. 'What  are my feelings,
then, when I find that there is one  subject avoided by us! That there is  a
what's-his-name - a gulf - opened between us.  That  my own artless Edith is
changed to me! They are of the most poignant description, of course.'
     The Major left his chair, and took one nearer to the little table.
     'From day to day I see  this,  my dear  Major,' proceeded Mrs  Skewton.
'From day to day I feel this. From hour to hour I  reproach myself for  that
excess  of  faith  and  trustfulness  which  has  led  to  such  distressing
consequences; and almost from minute to  minute, I hope that  Mr  Dombey may
explain  himself,  and relieve the torture  I  undergo,  which is  extremely
wearing. But nothing happens, my dear  Major; I am the  slave  of remorse  -
take care  of the  coffee-cup: you are so very awkward - my darling Edith is
an  altered being; and I really don't see  what is to be done,  or what good
creature I can advise with.'
     Major  Bagstock, encouraged  perhaps by the  softened and  confidential
tone into which  Mrs Skewton,  after several  times  lapsing into it  for  a
moment, seemed now to have subsided for good, stretched out his  hand across
the little table, and said with a leer,
     'Advise with Joe, Ma'am.'
     'Then, you aggravating monster,' said Cleopatra, giving one hand to the
Major,  and tapping his knuckles with her fan, which she held in  the other:
'why  don't  you talk to me? you  know what  I  mean.  Why don't you tell me
something to the purpose?'
     The Major laughed, and  kissed the  hand she had bestowed upon him, and
laughed again immensely.
     'Is  there  as much  Heart in Mr  Dombey as I  gave  him  credit  for?'
languished  Cleopatra tenderly.  'Do you  think  he is  in earnest, my  dear
Major? Would you recommend his being spoken to, or his being left alone? Now
tell me, like a dear man, what would you advise.'
     'Shall  we marry  him to  Edith Granger,  Ma'am?'  chuckled  the Major,
hoarsely.
     'Mysterious creature!' returned Cleopatra, bringing  her  fan  to  bear
upon the Major's nose. 'How can we marry him?'
     'Shall we marry him to Edith Granger, Ma'am, I say?' chuckled the Major
again.
     Mrs Skewton returned no answer in words, but smiled upon the Major with
so much archness and vivacity, that that gallant officer considering himself
challenged, would have imprinted a kiss on her exceedingly red lips, but for
her interposing the fan with a very winning and juvenile dexterity. It might
have been in modesty; it might  have  been in apprehension of some danger to
their bloom.
     'Dombey, Ma'am,' said the Major, 'is a great catch.'
     'Oh,  mercenary  wretch!' cried Cleopatra,  with a little shriek, 'I am
shocked.'
     'And Dombey, Ma'am,' pursued the Major, thrusting forward his head, and
distending his eyes, 'is in  earnest. Joseph says it; Bagstock knows it;  J.
B. keeps him to  the mark. Leave Dombey to  himself, Ma'am. Dombey is  safe,
Ma'am. Do as you have done; do no more; and trust to J. B. for the end.'
     'You really think so, my dear Major?' returned Cleopatra,  who had eyed
him very cautiously, and very searchingly, in spite of her listless bearing.
     'Sure of it, Ma'am,'  rejoined the Major. 'Cleopatra  the peerless, and
her Antony  Bagstock, will  often speak of this, triumphantly, when  sharing
the elegance and wealth of Edith Dombey's establishment. Dombey's right-hand
man, Ma'am,' said the Major, stopping  abruptly in a  chuckle,  and becoming
serious, 'has arrived.'
     'This morning?' said Cleopatra.
     'This morning,  Ma'am,' returned  the Major.  'And Dombey's anxiety for
his arrival, Ma'am, is to be  referred - take J. B.'s word for this; for Joe
is devilish sly' - the Major tapped his nose, and screwed up one of his eyes
tight: which did not enhance his native beauty - 'to his desire that what is
in  the  wind  should become known  to  him'  without  Dombey's telling  and
consulting  him.  For  Dombey  is  as proud, Ma'am,'  said  the  Major,  'as
Lucifer.'
     'A  charming quality,'  lisped Mrs  Skewton; 'reminding  one of dearest
Edith.'
     'Well, Ma'am,' said the Major.  'I have thrown  out hints  already, and
the right-hand man understands 'em; and I'll throw out  more, before the day
is done.  Dombey projected this  morning a ride  to Warwick  Castle, and  to
Kenilworth,  to-morrow, to be preceded  by a breakfast with us.  I undertook
the delivery of this invitation. Will you honour us so far, Ma'am?' said the
Major, swelling with shortness of breath and slyness, as he produced a note,
addressed  to  the  Honourable Mrs  Skewton,  by favour of  Major  Bagstock,
wherein hers ever faithfully, Paul Dombey, besought her and her  amiable and
accomplished daughter  to  consent  to  the proposed  excursion;  and  in  a
postscript unto which,  the same ever faithfully Paul Dombey entreated to be
recalled to the remembrance of Mrs Granger.
     'Hush!' said Cleopatra, suddenly, 'Edith!'
     The loving mother can scarcely be described as resuming her insipid and
affected air when she  made this exclamation; for she had never cast it off;
nor was it  likely that  she ever would or could, in any other place than in
the grave. But hurriedly dismissing whatever shadow of earnestness, or faint
confession of a purpose,  laudable  or wicked,  that her  face, or voice, or
manner: had, for the moment, betrayed, she  lounged upon the couch, her most
insipid and most languid self again, as Edith entered the room.
     Edith, so  beautiful  and stately, but  so  cold and so repelling. Who,
slightly acknowledging the presence of Major Bagstock,  and directing a keen
glance  at  her mother, drew  back the  from  a window, and sat  down there,
looking out.
     'My dearest Edith,' said Mrs Skewton, 'where on earth have you been?  I
have wanted you, my love, most sadly.'
     'You said  you were engaged, and I stayed away,'  she answered, without
turning her head.
     'It was cruel to Old Joe, Ma'am,' said the Major in his gallantry.
     'It  was  very cruel, I  know,' she said,  still looking out - and said
with such calm  disdain, that the Major was  discomfited, and could think of
nothing in reply.
     'Major  Bagstock,  my darling  Edith,'  drawled  her  mother,  'who  is
generally the most useless and disagreeable  creature  in the  world: as you
know - '
     'It is surely not worthwhile,  Mama,' said Edith,  looking  round,  'to
observe these forms of speech. We are quite alone. We know each other.'
     The  quiet scorn  that  sat upon  her  handsome face  -  a  scorn  that
evidently lighted  on herself, no less than  them - was so intense and deep,
that her mother's simper, for the instant, though  of a  hardy constitution,
drooped before it.
     'My darling girl,' she began again.
     'Not woman yet?' said Edith, with a smile.
     'How  very odd you are to-day, my dear! Pray let me say, my love,  that
Major Bagstock has  brought the kindest of notes from Mr  Dombey,  proposing
that  we  should breakfast  with  him to-morrow,  and  ride  to Warwick  and
Kenilworth. Will you go, Edith?'
     'Will I go!' she  repeated, turning very red, and breathing  quickly as
she looked round at her mother.
     'I knew you would, my own, observed the  latter carelessly.  'It is, as
you say, quite a form to ask. Here is Mr Dombey's letter, Edith.'
     'Thank you. I have no desire to read it,' was her answer.
     'Then perhaps I had better answer it myself,' said Mrs Skewton, 'though
I had thought of asking you to be my secretary, darling.'  As Edith  made no
movement, and  no answer, Mrs  Skewton begged  the Major to wheel her little
table nearer, and to set open the desk it contained, and to take out pen and
paper  for  her;  all  which  congenial  offices   of  gallantry  the  Major
discharged, with much submission and devotion.
     'Your regards, Edith, my dear?' said Mrs Skewton, pausing, pen in hand,
at the postscript.
     'What you will, Mama,' she answered, without turning her head, and with
supreme indifference.
     Mrs Skewton wrote what she would, without seeking for any more explicit
directions, and  handed  her  letter to the  Major, who  receiving it  as  a
precious charge,  made a show of  laying it  near his heart, but was fain to
put it in the pocket of  his pantaloons on  account of the insecurity of his
waistcoat  The Major  then took a  very polished  and chivalrous farewell of
both ladies, which the elder one acknowledged in her usual manner, while the
younger,  sitting  with her face addressed to  the window, bent her  head so
slightly that it would have  been a greater compliment to the Major  to have
made  no sign at all,  and to  have left him to infer  that he had not  been
heard or thought of.
     'As  to  alteration in her, Sir,' mused the Major  on his way  back; on
which expedition - the afternoon being sunny and hot - he ordered the Native
and the  light  baggage to  the  front, and walked  in  the  shadow  of that
expatriated prince: 'as to alteration, Sir,  and pining, and  so forth, that
won't go down with Joseph Bagstock, None of that, Sir. It won't do here. But
as to there being something of  a  division between 'em  - or a  gulf as the
mother calls  it - damme, Sir, that seems true enough. And it's odd  enough!
Well, Sir!' panted  the  Major,  'Edith Granger and Dombey are well matched;
let 'em fight it out! Bagstock backs the winner!'
     The Major, by  saying these latter  words  aloud,  in the vigour of his
thoughts, caused the unhappy Native to stop, and turn  round,  in the belief
that he was personally addressed. Exasperated to the last degree by this act
of insubordination, the Major (though he was swelling with enjoyment of  his
own humour, at the moment of  its occurrence instantly thrust his cane among
the Native's ribs, and continued to stir him up, at short intervals, all the
way to the hotel.
     Nor was the Major  less  exasperated as he dressed for  dinner,  during
which  operation  the dark servant  underwent  the  pelting of  a  shower of
miscellaneous objects,  varying  in  size from  a boot to  a hairbrush,  and
including  everything  that came within his  master's  reach. For  the Major
plumed himself on having the Native in a perfect state of drill, and visited
the least departure  from strict  discipline with this kind of fatigue duty.
Add  to  this,  that  he  maintained  the  Native  about  his  person  as  a
counter-irritant against the gout,  and all other  vexations, mental as well
as bodily; and the  Native would appear to have earned his pay -  which  was
not large.
     At  length,  the Major having disposed  of all the  missiles that  were
convenient  to his  hand, and having called the Native  so many new names as
must have given him great occasion to marvel at the resources of the English
language,  submitted to  have  his cravat  put on;  and  being  dressed, and
finding  himself  in a  brisk  flow  of  spirits after this  exercise,  went
downstairs to enliven 'Dombey' and his right-hand man.
     Dombey was not yet in the  room, but the right-hand man was  there, and
his dental treasures were, as usual, ready for the Major.
     'Well, Sir!'  said the Major. 'How have you passed the time since I had
the happiness of meeting you? Have you walked at all?'
     'A saunter of  barely half  an  hour's  duration,' returned Carker. 'We
have been so much occupied.'
     'Business, eh?' said the Major.
     'A  variety of  little matters necessary to  be gone through,'  replied
Carker. 'But do  you  know -  this is quite  unusual with me, educated  in a
distrustful school, and who am not generally disposed to be  communicative,'
he said, breaking off, and speaking in a charming tone of frankness - 'but I
feel quite confidential with you, Major Bagstock.'
     'You do me honour, Sir,' returned the Major. 'You may be.'
     '