he  comes  at  your
recommendation, let him come to your room.'
     'May I - shall I go away?' asked Florence, hurriedly.
     Edith  nodded yes,  but on her way to the door Florence met the visitor
coming   in.  With  the  same   disagreeable  mixture   of  familiarity  and
forbearance, with which he had first addressed her, he  addressed her now in
his softest manner - hoped she was quite well - needed not to ask, with such
looks to  anticipate the answer  - had scarcely had  the honour to know her,
last night, she was so greatly  changed - and held the door open  for her to
pass out; with a secret sense of power in  her shrinking  from him, that all
the deference and politeness of his manner could not quite conceal.
     He  then  bowed himself for  a moment  over Mrs Skewton's condescending
hand, and lastly bowed to Edith. Coldly returning his salute without looking
at  him, and  neither seating  herself  nor inviting him  to  be seated, she
waited for him to speak.
     Entrenched  in her pride and power, and  with all  the obduracy  of her
spirit summoned about her, still her old conviction that  she and her mother
had been  known  by  this  man in  their  worst  colours, from  their  first
acquaintance; that every degradation she had suffered in her own eyes was as
plain  to him as to herself; that he read her life as though it  were a vile
book, and fluttered the leaves before her in slight looks and tones of voice
which no one else could detect;  weakened and undermined her. Proudly as she
opposed herself to him,  with her commanding face exacting his humility, her
disdainful lip repulsing him, her bosom angry at his intrusion, and the dark
lashes of her eyes sullenly  veiling their light, that  no  ray  of it might
shine upon him - and submissively as he stood before her, with an entreating
injured manner, but with complete submission  to her will - she knew, in her
own soul, that the cases were reversed, and that the triumph and superiority
were his, and that he knew it full well.
     'I have presumed,' said Mr Carker, 'to solicit an interview, and I have
ventured to describe it as being one of business, because - '
     'Perhaps you  are charged by Mr Dombey with  some  message of reproof,'
said Edit 'You possess Mr  Dombey's  confidence  in such an  unusual degree,
Sir, that you would scarcely surprise me if that were your business.'
     'I have no message to the lady who sheds a lustre upon his  name,' said
Mr Carker. 'But I  entreat that lady, on my own  behalf to be just to a very
humble claimant for justice at her hands - a mere dependant of Mr Dombey's -
which is a position of humility; and to reflect upon my perfect helplessness
last  night, and  the impossibility of my avoiding the share that was forced
upon me in a very painful occasion.'
     'My dearest Edith,' hinted  Cleopatra in a low voice, as  she held  her
eye-glass aside,  'really  very charming of Mr What's-his-name. And full  of
heart!'
     'For I  do,'  said Mr Carker, appealing  to Mrs  Skewton with a look of
grateful deference, - 'I do  venture to call  it a  painful occasion, though
merely  because it was so to me,  who had  the misfortune to  be present. So
slight a difference, as between the principals - between those who love each
other with disinterested  devotion, and would make any  sacrifice of self in
such a cause -  is nothing. As Mrs  Skewton  herself expressed, with so much
truth and feeling last night, it is nothing.'
     Edith could not look at him, but she said after a few moments,
     'And your business, Sir - '
     'Edith,  my pet,' said  Mrs  Skewton,  'all  this  time  Mr  Carker  is
standing! My dear Mr Carker, take a seat, I beg.'
     He offered  no  reply to the  mother,  but fixed his eyes  on the proud
daughter, as though he  would only be bidden  by her, and was resolved to he
bidden by  her. Edith, in spite of herself sat  down,  and slightly motioned
with her hand to him to be seated too. No action could be colder, haughtier,
more insolent in its air of supremacy and disrespect, but  she had struggled
against  even  that concession  ineffectually, and it was wrested from  her.
That was enough! Mr Carker sat down.
     'May I be allowed,  Madam,' said Carker, turning his white teeth on Mrs
Skewton like  a light - 'a lady of your excellent  sense  and quick  feeling
will  give me credit, for good reason, I am sure - to address what I have to
say, to Mrs  Dombey, and  to leave her to impart it to you who  are her best
and dearest friend - next to Mr Dombey?'
     Mrs Skewton would have retired, but Edith stopped her. Edith would have
stopped him too, and indignantly ordered  him to speak openly or not at all,
but that he said, in a low  Voice -  'Miss Florence - the young lady who has
just left the room - '
     Edith  suffered  him  to  proceed.  She  looked at him now.  As he bent
forward, to be nearer,  with the utmost show  of delicacy and  respect,  and
with his teeth persuasively arrayed, in a  self-depreciating smile, she felt
as if she could have struck him dead.
     'Miss Florence's position,' he  began, 'has been an unfortunate  one. I
have a difficulty in alluding  to it to you,  whose attachment to her father
is naturally watchful and jealous of every word that applies to him.' Always
distinct  and soft in  speech, no language could describe the extent  of his
distinctness and softness, when he  said these words, or came to  any others
of  a  similar  import. 'But, as one who  is  devoted to  Mr Dombey  in  his
different  way,  and  whose life is  passed in  admiration  of  Mr  Dombey's
character, may I say, without offence  to  your tenderness as a  wife,  that
Miss Florence has unhappily been neglected - by her father. May I say by her
father?'
     Edith replied, 'I know it.'
     'You know it!' said Mr Carker, with a great  appearance of relief.  'It
removes  a mountain  from my breast. May  I hope you  know how  the  neglect
originated; in  what an amiable phase  of Mr  Dombey's pride -  character  I
mean?'
     'You may pass that by, Sir,' she returned,  'and come the sooner to the
end of what you have to say.'
     'Indeed,  I  am sensible,  Madam,' replied Carker,  -  'trust me,  I am
deeply sensible, that Mr Dombey can require  no justification in anything to
you.  But,  kindly judge  of my breast by your own, and you will  forgive my
interest in him, if in its excess, it goes at all astray.
     What a  stab to her  proud heart, to sit there, face to face  with him,
and have him tendering her false oath  at the altar again  and again for her
acceptance, and pressing it upon her  like the dregs of a sickening  cup she
could  not own  her loathing of  or turn away from'. How shame, remorse, and
passion  raged within her, when, upright and majestic  in her  beauty before
him, she knew that in her spirit she was down at his feet!
     'Miss Florence,' said  Carker, 'left to the  care - if one may call  it
care  -  of  servants  and mercenary  people,  in  every way  her inferiors,
necessarily  wanted  some  guide and  compass  in  her  younger  days,  and,
naturally, for  want  of them, has been  indiscreet, and  has in some degree
forgotten her station. There was some folly about one Walter,  a common lad,
who is fortunately dead now: and some very undesirable association, I regret
to say, with  certain coasting sailors,  of anything but  good repute, and a
runaway old bankrupt.'
     'I  have  heard  the circumstances,  Sir,'  said  Edith,  flashing  her
disdainful glance upon him, 'and I  know that  you pervert them. You may not
know it. I hope so.'
     'Pardon me,' said Mr Carker, 'I believe that nobody knows them so  well
as I. Your  generous and ardent nature, Madam - the same  nature which is so
nobly  imperative in vindication of  your  beloved and honoured husband, and
which has blessed him as even his merits deserve - I must respect, defer to,
bow before. But, as regards the circumstances, which is indeed the  business
I presumed to solicit your attention to, I can have no doubt, since, in  the
execution of  my  trust as  Mr Dombey's confidential  - I presume  to  say -
friend, I have fully ascertained them. In my execution  of that trust; in my
deep concern,  which  you can so well understand, for everything relating to
him, intensified, if you will (for I fear I labour under  your displeasure),
by  the lower motive of  desire to prove my  diligence, and make  myself the
more  acceptable;  I  have long  pursued these  circumstances  by myself and
trustworthy instruments, and have innumerable and most minute proofs.'
     She raised her eyes no higher than his mouth,  but she saw the means of
mischief vaunted in every tooth it contained.
     'Pardon  me, Madam,' he continued, 'if in my perplexity,  I presume  to
take counsel with you, and to consult your pleasure. I think I have observed
that you are greatly interested in Miss Florence?'
     What  was there in her he had not  observed, and did  not know? Humbled
and yet maddened by  the  thought, in  every new  presentment of it, however
faint, she pressed her teeth upon  her quivering lip to force  composure  on
it, and distantly inclined her head in reply.
     'This  interest,  Madam  -  so  touching   an  evidence  of  everything
associated with Mr Dombey being dear  to you - induces me  to pause before I
make him  acquainted with these  circumstances, which, as  yet, he does  not
know. It so shakes me, if I may make the confession,  in my allegiance, that
on the  intimation  of  the least desire to  that effect from  you,  I would
suppress them.'
     Edith raised her head quickly,  and starting back, bent her dark glance
upon him.  He met it with his blandest and most deferential  smile, and went
on.
     'You say  that as I describe them, they  are perverted. I fear  not - I
fear not: but let us assume that they  are. The  uneasiness I have for  some
time felt on the subject, arises in this: that the mere circumstance of such
association often repeated, on the part of Miss Florence, however innocently
and  confidingly, would be conclusive  with  Mr Dombey,  already predisposed
against her,  and  would  lead  him  to  take  some  step  (I  know  he  has
occasionally  contemplated it) of separation and  alienation of her from his
home. Madam, bear with me, and  remember my intercourse with  Mr Dombey, and
my knowledge of him, and my reverence for him, almost from childhood, when I
say that if he has a fault, it is a lofty stubbornness, rooted in that noble
pride  and sense  of  power which belong to him, and which we must all defer
to; which  is not  assailable  like  the obstinacy of other characters;  and
which grows upon itself from day to day, and year to year.
     She  bent her  glance upon him  still;  but, look as steadfast  as  she
would, her haughty nostrils dilated, and  her breath  came somewhat  deeper,
and her lip would slightly curl, as he described that in his patron to which
they must all bow down. He saw it; and though his expression did not change,
she knew he saw it.
     'Even  so  slight an incident  as  last night's,' he said, 'if I  might
refer to it once more, would serve  to illustrate my meaning,  better than a
greater one. Dombey and Son  know neither time, nor  place, nor  season, but
bear  them all down. But I rejoice in its occurrence, for  it has opened the
way for me to approach Mrs Dombey with this  subject to-day, even if  it has
entailed upon me  the  penalty of her temporary  displeasure. Madam,  in the
midst  of my uneasiness and apprehension on this  subject, I was summoned by
Mr Dombey  to Leamington.  There I saw you. There I  could  not help knowing
what relation  you would shortly  occupy  towards  him  -  to  his  enduring
happiness  and  yours.   There  I  resolved   to  await  the  time  of  your
establishment at home here, and to do as I have  now done. I have, at heart,
no fear that I  shall be wanting in my duty to Mr Dombey,  if I bury what  I
know in your breast; for where there is  but one  heart and mind between two
persons - as in such a  marriage -  one almost represents the  other.  I can
acquit  my  conscience therefore,  almost equally, by  confidence, on such a
theme, in you or him. For the  reasons I have mentioned I  would select you.
May I aspire to the distinction of believing that my confidence is accepted,
and that I am relieved from my responsibility?'
     He long remembered the look she gave him - who could see it, and forget
it? - and the struggle that ensued within her. At last she said:
     'I  accept  it, Sir You will please to  consider this matter at an end,
and that it goes no farther.'
     He bowed  low,  and  rose. She  rose too, and  he took  leave  with all
humility. But Withers, meeting him on the stairs, stood amazed at the beauty
of  his teeth,  and at his brilliant smile;  and  as he  rode  away upon his
white-legged horse, the people took him for a dentist, such was the dazzling
show  he made. The  people took  her,  when  she  rode out in  her  carriage
presently, for a great lady, as happy as she was rich and fine. But they had
not seen her,  just before, in her own room with no one by; and they had not
heard her utterance of the three words, 'Oh Florence, Florence!'
     Mrs Skewton, reposing on her sofa, and sipping her chocolate, had heard
nothing  but  the  low word  business, for which she had a  mortal aversion,
insomuch  that she  had  long banished it from her  vocabulary, and had gone
nigh, in  a  charming  manner and  with an immense  amount  of heart, to say
nothing  of soul,  to  ruin  divers  milliners and  others  in  consequence.
Therefore Mrs Skewton asked no questions,  and showed  no curiosity. Indeed,
the  peach-velvet bonnet  gave  her sufficient occupation out of  doors; for
being perched on the  back of her head, and the  day being rather windy,  it
was frantic to escape from Mrs Skewton's company, and  would be  coaxed into
no sort of compromise. When the carriage was closed, and the  wind shut out,
the palsy  played among the artificial roses again like an almshouse-full of
superannuated zephyrs; and altogether Mrs Skewton had enough to  do, and got
on but indifferently.
     She  got  on  no  better  towards night; for  when Mrs  Dombey, in  her
dressing-room, had been  dressed  and  waiting for  her half an hour, and Mr
Dombey, in  the drawing-room, had  paraded  himself into a  state of  solemn
fretfulness  (they  were  all three going  out to  dinner), Flowers the Maid
appeared with a pale face to Mrs Dombey, saying:
     'If you please, Ma'am, I beg  your pardon,  but I can't do nothing with
Missis!'
     'What do you mean?' asked Edith.
     'Well,  Ma'am,' replied  the  frightened  maid,  'I hardly  know. She's
making faces!'
     Edith hurried with her to her  mother's room. Cleopatra was arrayed  in
full dress, with the diamonds, short sleeves, rouge, curls, teeth, and other
juvenility all complete; but Paralysis was not to be deceived, had known her
for the object of its errand, and had struck her at her glass, where she lay
like a horrible doll that had tumbled down.
     They  took her to  pieces in very shame, and put the little of her that
was real on a bed. Doctors were sent  for, and  soon came. Powerful remedies
were  resorted to; opinions given that she would rally from this shock,  but
would not survive another; and  there she lay speechless, and staring at the
ceiling,  for days; sometimes  making inarticulate sounds in answer  to such
questions as  did she know who were present, and the like:  sometimes giving
no reply either by sign or gesture, or in her unwinking eyes.
     At length she began  to recover consciousness, and  in some degree  the
power of motion, though not yet of speech. One day the use of her right hand
returned; and  showing  it to her  maid who was in  attendance on  her,  and
appearing  very  uneasy  in her mind, she made  signs for a pencil and  some
paper. This the maid immediately provided, thinking she was going to  make a
will, or  write some last request; and Mrs  Dombey being from home, the maid
awaited the result with solemn feelings.
     After much painful  scrawling  and  erasing,  and  putting in  of wrong
characters, which seemed to tumble out of the  pencil of their  own  accord,
the old woman produced this document:
     'Rose-coloured curtains.'
     The  maid  being  perfectly  transfixed,  and  with  tolerable  reason,
Cleopatra  amended the manuscript by adding  two  words more, when  it stood
thus:
     'Rose-coloured curtains for doctors.'
     The maid now perceived  remotely that  she wished these articles  to be
provided for the better presentation  of her complexion to the  faculty; and
as those in the house who knew  her best, had no doubt of the correctness of
this  opinion,  which  she  was soon  able  to  establish  for  herself  the
rose-coloured curtains were  added to her bed, and she mended with increased
rapidity from that hour. She was soon able to sit up,  in curls and a  laced
cap and nightgown,  and to have a  little  artificial bloom dropped into the
hollow caverns of her cheeks.
     It was a tremendous sight to  see this  old woman in her finery leering
and mincing at Death,  and playing off her youthful tricks upon him as if he
had been  the  Major;  but  an alteration  in  her mind that  ensued on  the
paralytic stroke was  fraught with as  much  matter for reflection,  and was
quite as ghastly.
     Whether the weakening of her intellect made her more cunning and  false
than before, or whether it confused her between what  she  had assumed to be
and what she  really had been, or  whether it had awakened any glimmering of
remorse, which could neither struggle  into  light nor  get  back into total
darkness, or whether, in the jumble of her faculties, a combination of these
effects  had been shaken up, which  is perhaps the more  likely supposition,
the result was this: - That she became hugely exacting in respect of Edith's
affection and gratitude and attention to her; highly laudatory of herself as
a most  inestimable parent; and very jealous of  having any rival in Edith's
regard.  Further, in place of remembering that compact made between them for
an  avoidance  of the  subject, she  constantly  alluded  to her  daughter's
marriage as a proof of her being  an incomparable mother; and all this, with
the weakness and peevishness of such a state, always serving for a sarcastic
commentary on her levity and youthfulness.
     'Where is Mrs Dombey? she would say to her maid.
     'Gone out, Ma'am.'
     'Gone out! Does she go out to shun her Mama, Flowers?'
     'La bless you, no, Ma'am. Mrs Dombey has only gone  out for a ride with
Miss Florence.'
     'Miss Florence. Who's Miss Florence? Don't tell me about Miss Florence.
What's Miss Florence to her, compared to me?'
     The apposite display of the diamonds,  or  the peach-velvet bonnet (she
sat in the bonnet  to  receive visitors, weeks before she could stir  out of
doors), or the dressing of her up in some gaud or other, usually stopped the
tears that began to flow hereabouts; and  she  would remain  in a complacent
state until Edith came to see her; when,  at a glance of the proud face, she
would relapse again.
     'Well, I am sure, Edith!' she would cry, shaking her head.
     'What is the matter, mother?'
     'Matter! I really don't know what is the matter. The world is coming to
such  an  artificial and ungrateful state, that I begin  to think there's no
Heart - or anything of that sort - left in it, positively. Withers is more a
child to me than you are. He attends to me much more than my own daughter. I
almost wish  I didn't look so young - and all that  kind of thing - and then
perhaps I should be more considered.'
     'What would you have, mother?'
     'Oh, a great deal, Edith,' impatiently.
     'Is there anything you want  that you have not? It is your own fault if
there be.'
     'My  own  fault!' beginning to whimper. 'The parent I have been to you,
Edith: making you a companion from your cradle! And when you neglect me, and
have  no more  natural affection  for me than if I  was a  stranger  - not a
twentieth part of the affection  that you have for Florence -  but I am only
your mother, and should corrupt her in a day!  -  you  reproach me with  its
being my own fault.'
     'Mother, mother, I reproach you with nothing. Why will you always dwell
on this?'
     'Isn't it natural  that I should dwell on this, when I am all affection
and sensitiveness, and am wounded in the cruellest way, whenever you look at
me?'
     'I  do not mean  to wound you, mother.  Have you no remembrance of what
has been said between us? Let the Past rest.'
     'Yes,  rest!  And let gratitude to  me  rest; and let  affection for me
rest; and  let  me rest in my out-of-the-way  room,  with no society and  no
attention, while you find new relations to make much of, who have no earthly
claim  upon  you!  Good  gracious,  Edith,  do  you  know  what  an  elegant
establishment you are at the head of?'
     'Yes. Hush!'
     'And  that  gentlemanly  creature, Dombey? Do  you  know that  you  are
married to  him, Edith, and that you have a settlement and a position, and a
carriage, and I don't know what?'
     'Indeed, I know it, mother; well.'
     'As you would have had  with that delightful good soul - what  did they
call him?  - Granger -  if he hadn't died. And who have you to thank for all
this, Edith?'
     'You, mother; you.'
     'Then  put your arms round  my  neck, and  kiss me; and show me, Edith,
that you  know  there never was a better Mama than  I have been  to you. And
don't let me become a perfect fright with teasing and wearing myself at your
ingratitude, or when I'm out again in society no soul will know me, not even
that hateful animal, the Major.'
     But,  sometimes, when Edith  went nearer  to her, and bending down  her
stately  head, Put  her cold cheek to hers, the mother would draw back as If
she were afraid of her, and would fall  into a fit of trembling, and cry out
that there was a wandering in her wits. And sometimes she would entreat her,
with humility, to sit down on  the  chair beside her bed, and  would look at
her (as  she  sat  there brooding) with a face  that even the  rose-coloured
curtains could not make otherwise than scared and wild.
     The rose-coloured curtains  blushed, in course of  time, on Cleopatra's
bodily  recovery, and on her dress -  more juvenile than ever, to repair the
ravages of illness  - and on the rouge, and on the teeth,  and on the curls,
and on the  diamonds, and the short sleeves, and the  whole  wardrobe of the
doll that  had tumbled down  before  the mirror. They blushed,  too, now and
then, upon  an  indistinctness  in  her speech which  she  turned off with a
girlish giggle, and on an occasional failing In her memory, that had no rule
in it, but came  and  went  fantastically, as if in mockery of her fantastic
self.
     But they never  blushed upon a  change in the new manner of her thought
and speech towards her daughter.  And though that daughter often came within
their  influence, they never blushed upon  her  loveliness  irradiated by  a
smile, or softened by the light of filial love, in its stem beauty.

        CHAPTER 38.
     Miss Tox improves an Old Acquaintance

     The forlorn Miss Tox, abandoned by her friend Louisa  Chick, and bereft
of Mr  Dombey's countenance  - for no delicate pair of wedding cards, united
by  a silver thread, graced the  chimney-glass in Princess's  Place,  or the
harpsichord, or any of those little posts of display which Lucretia reserved
for holiday  occupation - became depressed in her spirits, and suffered much
from melancholy. For a time the Bird Waltz was unheard in  Princess's Place,
the plants were neglected, and dust collected on the miniature of Miss Tox's
ancestor with the powdered head and pigtail.

     Miss Tox, however,  was  not  of  an age  or of  a disposition  long to
abandon herself to  unavailing regrets.  Only two notes  of  the harpsichord
were dumb  from disuse when the Bird Waltz again warbled and trilled in  the
crooked drawing-room: only one  slip of geranium fell a  victim to imperfect
nursing,  before she was gardening  at  her green  baskets again,  regularly
every  morning; the powdered-headed ancestor had  not been under a cloud for
more  than six  weeks, when Miss Tox breathed on his  benignant visage,  and
polished him up with a piece of wash-leather.
     Still, Miss  Tox  was  lonely,  and at a loss. Her attachments, however
ludicrously shown,  were  real and strong; and she was, as she expressed it,
'deeply hurt by the unmerited contumely  she  had met with from Louisa.' But
there was no  such  thing as anger  in Miss Tox's  composition.  If she  had
ambled on through life, in her soft spoken  way,  without  any opinions, she
had,  at least, got so far  without any  harsh passions.  The mere sight  of
Louisa Chick  in  the  street  one  day,  at  a  considerable  distance,  so
overpowered  her milky nature, that she was fain to seek immediate refuge in
a pastrycook's, and  there, in a  musty little back  room usually devoted to
the consumption of soups, and pervaded by an ox-tail atmosphere, relieve her
feelings by weeping plentifully.
     Against Mr Dombey  Miss Tox  hardly  felt  that  she had any  reason of
complaint. Her  sense of that  gentleman's magnificence was such,  that once
removed from him,  she felt as if her distance always had been immeasurable,
and as if  he had greatly condescended  in tolerating her  at all.  No  wife
could  be too  handsome  or  too  stately for  him, according to Miss  Tox's
sincere opinion. It was perfectly natural that in looking for one, he should
look  high. Miss  Tox  with  tears  laid  down this  proposition, and  fully
admitted  it, twenty  times  a  day. She  never recalled the lofty manner in
which Mr Dombey had made  her  subservient to his  convenience and caprices,
and had  graciously permitted her to be one of the nurses of his little son.
She only thought, in her own words,  'that she had passed a great many happy
hours in  that house, which she  must  ever remember with gratification, and
that she could never cease to regard Mr Dombey as one of the most impressive
and dignified of men.'
     Cut  off,  however,  from the implacable Louisa, and being shy  of  the
Major  (whom she  viewed with  some distrust  now),  Miss Tox found it  very
irksome to know nothing  of what was going on in Mr  Dombey's establishment.
And as she really had  got into the  habit of considering  Dombey and Son as
the pivot on which the world in general turned, she resolved, rather than be
ignorant of intelligence which so  strongly interested her, to cultivate her
old  acquaintance,  Mrs  Richards,  who she  knew,  since her last memorable
appearance  before  Mr  Dombey,  was  in  the  habit  of  sometimes  holding
communication with his servants. Perhaps Miss Tox, in seeking out the Toodle
family, had  the  tender motive  hidden in her breast of having  somebody to
whom  she  could  talk about  Mr Dombey, no matter how humble  that somebody
might be.
     At all events,  towards  the Toodle  habitation  Miss Tox directed  her
steps one evening,  what time Mr Toodle, cindery  and swart, was  refreshing
himself  with  tea,  in the  bosom of his family. Mr Toodle  had only  three
stages  of  existence. He  was either taking  refreshment  in the bosom just
mentioned, or he  was tearing  through  the country  at from twenty-five  to
fifty miles an hour, or he was sleeping after his fatigues. He was always in
a whirlwind or a calm, and a peaceable,  contented, easy-going man Mr Toodle
was in either state, who seemed to have made over all his own inheritance of
fuming  and  fretting  to the  engines with  which he  was  connected, which
panted, and gasped, and chafed, and wore themselves out, in a most unsparing
manner, while Mr Toodle led a mild and equable life.
     'Polly, my gal,' said Mr Toodle, with a young Toodle on each knee,  and
two more making tea for him, and plenty more scattered about - Mr Toodle was
never out  of children, but always kept  a good supply on  hand - 'you ain't
seen our Biler lately, have you?'
     'No,' replied Polly, 'but he's almost  certain to look in tonight. It's
his right evening, and he's very regular.'
     'I  suppose,' said  Mr Toodle, relishing his  meal infinitely,  'as our
Biler is a doin' now about as well as a boy can do, eh, Polly?'
     'Oh! he's a doing beautiful!' responded Polly.
     'He ain't got to be  at all secret-like -  has he, Polly?' inquired  Mr
Toodle.
     'No!' said Mrs Toodle, plumply.
     'I'm glad he ain't got to  be at  all secret-like, Polly,' observed  Mr
Toodle  in his slow and measured way, and shovelling in his bread and butter
with a clasp knife, as  if he were stoking himself, 'because that don't look
well; do it, Polly?'
     'Why, of course it don't, father. How can you ask!'
     'You see,  my  boys and gals,' said  Mr Toodle, looking round upon  his
family, 'wotever  you're up to in a honest way, it's my opinion as you can't
do better  than be open. If you find yourselves in  cuttings  or in tunnels,
don't you  play no secret  games.  Keep your whistles going, and  let's know
where you are.
     The  rising Toodles  set  up  a  shrill  murmur,  expressive  of  their
resolution to profit by the paternal advice.
     'But  what makes you say this along of  Rob, father?'  asked  his wife,
anxiously.
     'Polly,  old  ooman,'  said  Mr  Toodle,  'I  don't know as  I  said it
partickler along o' Rob, I'm sure. I starts light with Rob only; I  comes to
a branch;  I takes on what  I finds there; and a  whole train of  ideas gets
coupled on to him, afore I knows where I am, or where  they comes from. What
a Junction a man's thoughts is,' said Mr Toodle, 'to-be-sure!'
     This profound reflection Mr Toodle washed  down with a pint mug of tea,
and  proceeded to solidify with a great weight of bread and butter; charging
his young daughters meanwhile, to keep plenty of hot water in the pot, as he
was uncommon  dry,  and should take the  indefinite quantity of 'a  sight of
mugs,' before his thirst was appeased.
     In  satisfying himself, however,  Mr Toodle  was  not regardless of the
younger  branches about him, who, although they had made  their  own evening
repast, were on  the look-out for irregular morsels, as possessing a relish.
These he distributed now and  then to  the expectant circle, by holding  out
great wedges of bread and butter, to be bitten  at by the  family  in lawful
succession, and  by  serving  out small doses  of tea in like  manner with a
spoon; which snacks had such a relish in  the mouths of these young Toodles,
that, after partaking of  the same, they performed private dances of ecstasy
among  themselves, and stood on one leg apiece, and hopped,  and indulged in
other saltatory tokens of gladness.  These vents for their excitement found,
they gradually closed about  Mr Toodle  again, and eyed  him hard as  he got
through more bread  and  butter and  tea;  affecting,  however,  to have  no
further expectations of their own in  reference to  those viands,  but to be
conversing on foreign subjects, and whispering confidentially.
     Mr  Toodle,  in the  midst of this family group,  and setting  an awful
example to his children  in the way of appetite, was conveying the two young
Toodles on  his knees to Birmingham by special engine, and was contemplating
the rest over  a barrier of bread  and butter, when  Rob the Grinder, in his
sou'wester  hat and mourning slops, presented himself, and was received with
a general rush of brothers and sisters.
     'Well, mother!' said Rob, dutifully kissing her; 'how are you, mother?'
     'There's my boy!' cried Polly, giving him a hug and a pat  on the back.
'Secret! Bless you, father, not he!'
     This was intended for Mr  Toodle's  private  edification, but  Rob  the
Grinder,  whose withers  were not  unwrung, caught the  words as  they  were
spoken.
     'What! father's been a saying something more again  me, has he?'  cried
the injured innocent. 'Oh, what a hard thing it is that when a cove has once
gone a little wrong, a  cove's  own father should be always a throwing it in
his face  behind  his  back!  It's  enough,'  cried  Rob, resorting  to  his
coat-cuff in anguish of spirit, 'to make  a cove go and do something, out of
spite!'
     'My poor boy!' cried Polly, 'father didn't mean anything.'
     'If father  didn't  mean anything,' blubbered the injured Grinder, 'why
did he go and say  anything, mother?  Nobody thinks half so bad of me as  my
own father does. What a unnatural  thing! I wish somebody'd take and chop my
head off. Father wouldn't mind doing it, I  believe, and I'd much  rather he
did that than t'other.'
     At  these  desperate words all the young Toodles  shrieked;  a pathetic
effect,  which the Grinder  improved by ironically adjuring them not  to cry
for him, for they ought to hate him, they ought, if  they was good boys  and
girls;  and  this  so  touched the youngest Toodle  but one, who was  easily
moved,  that  it  touched  him not only in his spirit but in  his wind  too;
making him so purple  that Mr Toodle in consternation carried him out to the
water-butt,  and  would  have  put  him under  the  tap, but  for  his being
recovered by the sight of that instrument.
     Matters  having reached  this  point,  Mr  Toodle  explained,  and  the
virtuous  feelings of his  son  being  thereby calmed, they shook hands, and
harmony reigned again.
     'Will you do as I do, Biler, my boy?' inquired his father, returning to
his tea with new strength.
     'No, thank'ee, father. Master and I had tea together.'
     'And how is master, Rob?' said Polly.
     'Well, I  don't know, mother;  not  much  to boast on.  There  ain't no
bis'ness  done, you see. He don't know anything about it - the Cap'en don't.
There  was  a man come  into  the shop this  very  day, and says, "I want  a
so-and-so," he says - some hard name or another. "A which?" says the Cap'en.
"A  so-and-so,"  says the man. "Brother," says the Cap'en, "will you take  a
observation round the shop." "Well," says the man, "I've  done" "Do  you see
wot you want?" says  the Cap'en "No, I don't," says the man. "Do you know it
wen you do see it?" says the Cap'en. "No, I don't," says the man. "Why, then
I tell you wot, my lad," says the Cap'en, "you'd better go back and ask  wot
it's like, outside, for no more don't I!"'
     'That ain't the way to make money, though, is it?' said Polly.
     'Money,  mother!  He'll never make  money. He has  such ways as I never
see. He ain't  a  bad master though, I'll say that for him. But  that  ain't
much to me, for I don't think I shall stop with him long.'
     'Not stop in your place, Rob!' cried his mother; while Mr Toodle opened
his eyes.
     'Not in that place, p'raps,'  returned  the  Grinder,  with  a wink. 'I
shouldn't wonder - friends  at court you know -  but never you mind, mother,
just now; I'm all right, that's all.'
     The indisputable proof  afforded in  these  hints, and in the Grinder's
mysterious manner, of his not being subject to  that failing which Mr Toodle
had, by implication, attributed to  him, might have led to a renewal  of his
wrongs, and of the sensation in the family, but for the opportune arrival of
another  visitor,  who,  to Polly's  great  surprise, appeared  at the door,
smiling patronage and friendship on all there.
     'How do  you do, Mrs Richards?' said Miss Tox. 'I have come to see you.
May I come in?'
     The cheery face of Mrs Richards shone with a hospitable reply, and Miss
Tox, accepting the proffered chair, and grab fully recognising Mr Toodle  on
her way to  it, untied her bonnet strings,  and said that in the first place
she must beg the dear children, one and all, to come and kiss her.
     The  ill-starred  youngest  Toodle but one, who would appear, from  the
frequency  of his  domestic  troubles, to have  been  born  under an unlucky
planet, was prevented from performing his part in this general salutation by
having fixed the sou'wester hat (with which he had been previously trifling)
deep on his  head, hind side before, and being unable to get  it  off again;
which accident  presenting to his terrified imagination  a dismal picture of
his passing the rest of his days in darkness, and in hopeless seclusion from
his friends and family, caused him  to struggle with great violence,  and to
utter suffocating  cries. Being released, his face was discovered to be very
hot, and red, and damp; and Miss Tox took him on her lap, much exhausted.
     'You have almost  forgotten me,  Sir, I daresay,' said  Miss Tox  to Mr
Toodle.
     'No, Ma'am, no,'  said Toodle. 'But we've all on  us got a little older
since then.'
     'And how do you find yourself, Sir?' inquired Miss Tox, blandly.
     'Hearty,  Ma'am, thank'ee,' replied Toodle. 'How do  you find yourself,
Ma'am? Do the rheumaticks keep off pretty well, Ma'am? We must all expect to
grow into 'em, as we gets on.'
     'Thank you,' said Miss  Tox. 'I have  not  felt any  inconvenience from
that disorder yet.'
     'You're wery fortunate,  Ma'am,' returned  Mr  Toodle. 'Many  people at
your time of  life, Ma'am,  is martyrs to  it. There was my  mother  - ' But
catching his  wife's  eye here,  Mr Toodle judiciously  buried  the rest  in
another mug of tea
     'You  never mean to say, Mrs Richards,' cried Miss Tox, looking at Rob,
'that that is your - '
     'Eldest,  Ma'am,'  said Polly. 'Yes, indeed, it  is. That's the  little
fellow, Ma'am, that was the innocent cause of so much.'
     'This here, Ma'am,' said Toodle, 'is him with the short legs - and they
was,' said Mr Toodle, with a touch of poetry in his tone, 'unusual short for
leathers - as Mr Dombey made a Grinder on.'
     The recollection almost overpowered Miss Tox. The subject of it  had  a
peculiar interest  for  her  directly. She  asked  him  to shake hands,  and
congratulated his mother on his frank, ingenuous face. Rob, overhearing her,
called up a look, to justify the eulogium, but it was hardly the right look.
     'And  now,  Mrs  Richards,'  said  Miss  Tox,  -  'and  you  too, Sir,'
addressing Toodle - 'I'll tell you, plainly and truly, what I have come here
for. You  may be aware, Mrs Richards -  and, possibly, you may be aware too,
Sir - that a little distance has interposed itself between me and some of my
friends, and that where I used to visit a good deal, I do not visit now.'
     Polly, who, with a woman's tact, understood this at once, expressed  as
much in a little look. Mr Toodle, who had not the faintest idea of what Miss
Tox was talking about, expressed that also, in a stare.
     'Of course,'  said Miss Tox, 'how our little coolness has arisen  is of
no moment, and does not require to be discussed. It is sufficient  for me to
say, that  I have the  greatest  possible  respect for, and interest in,  Mr
Dombey;' Miss Tox's voice faltered; 'and everything that relates to him.'
     Mr Toodle,  enlightened, shook his head, and said he had heerd it said,
and, for his own part, he did think, as Mr Dombey was a difficult subject.
     'Pray don't say  so,  Sir, if you  please,' returned Miss  Tox. 'Let me
entreat you not to  say  so, Sir, either  now, or at  any  future time. Such
observations cannot but  be very painful to me;  and  to a gentleman,  whose
mind is constituted as, I am quite sure, yours  is, can afford no  permanent
satisfaction.'
     Mr Toodle, who had not entertained the least doubt of offering a remark
that would be received with acquiescence, was greatly confounded.
     'All  that I  wish to say, Mrs Richards,' resumed  Miss  Tox, -  'and I
address myself to  you too, Sir, -  is this. That  any intelligence  of  the
proceedings of the family,  of the  welfare of the family,  of the health of
the family, that reaches you, will be always  most  acceptable to me. That I
shall  be always very  glad  to chat with Mrs Richards about the family, and
about  old time And as  Mrs Richards  and I  never  had the least difference
(though I could wish now that we  had been better  acquainted, but I have no
one but myself to blame for that), I  hope she will not object  to our being
very good friends now, and to my coming backwards and forwards here,  when I
like, without being a stranger. Now, I really hope, Mrs Richards,' said Miss
Tox  -  earnestly,  'that  you  will  take  this,  as  I  mean  it,  like  a
good-humoured creature, as you always were.'
     Polly  was gratified,  and showed it. Mr Toodle  didn't know whether he
was gratified or not, and preserved a stolid calmness.
     'You see, Mrs Richards,' said Miss Tox - 'and I hope you see too, Sir -
there are many little ways in which I can be slightly useful to you,  if you
will make no stranger of me; and in which I shall be delighted to be so. For
instance, I can teach  your  children something. I shall bring  a few little
books,  if you'll  allow me, and some work, and of an  evening now and then,
they'll learn  - dear  me, they'll learn  a  great  deal, I  trust, and be a
credit to their teacher.'
     Mr  Toodle, who  had  a  great  respect  for learning, jerked his  head
approvingly at his wife, and moistened his hands with dawning satisfaction.
     'Then, not  being a  stranger, I  shall  be in nobody's way,' said Miss
Tox, 'and  everything  will go on just  as if I were  not here. Mrs Richards
will do her mending, or her ironing, or her nursing, whatever it is, without
minding me: and you'll  smoke your  pipe, too,  if you're so disposed,  Sir,
won't you?'
     'Thank'ee, Mum,' said Mr Toodle. 'Yes; I'll take my bit of backer.'
     'Very good of you  to say so, Sir,' rejoined Miss Tox, 'and I really do
assure you now, unfeignedly, that it will be a great comfort to me, and that
whatever good I may be fortunate  enough  to do the  children, you will more
than pay  back to me, if you'll  enter into this little bargain comfortably,
and easily, and good-naturedly, without another word about it.'
     The bargain was  ratified on the  spot; and  Miss  Tox found herself so
much  at  home  already,  that  without delay she instituted  a  preliminary
examination of the children all  round  - which Mr Toodle much admired - and
booked  their  ages, names, and  acquirements,  on  a  piece of paper.  This
ceremony,  and  a little  attendant  gossip, prolonged the time  until after
their  usual hour  of  going  to bed,  and detained  Miss Tox  at the Toodle
fireside until it  was too late for  her  to walk home  alone.  The  gallant
Grinder, however, being still  there, politely  offered to attend her to her
own door; and  as it was something to  Miss Tox  to be seen home  by a youth
whom Mr Dombey had first inducted into those manly garments which are rarely
mentioned by name,' she very readily accepted the proposal.
     After shaking  hands with Mr  Toodle  and  Polly,  and kissing  all the
children, Miss Tox left the house, therefore, with unlimited popularity, and
carrying away with her  so light a heart that it might have given Mrs  Chick
offence if that good lady could have weighed it.
     Rob the Grinder, in his modesty, would have walked behind, but Miss Tox
desired him to keep beside her, for  conversational  purposes;  and,  as she
afterwards expressed it to his mother, 'drew him out,' upon the road.
     He  drew  out  so  bright,  and clear, and  shining, that Miss Tox  was
charmed with him. The  more Miss Tox drew him out, the  finer he came - like
wire.  There   never  was  a  better  or  more  promising  youth  -  a  more
affectionate,  steady, prudent, sober, honest, meek, candid young man - than
Rob drew out, that night.
     'I  am quite glad,'  said Miss  Tox,  arrived at her own door, 'to know
you. I hope you'll consider me your  friend, and that you'll come and see me
as often as you like. Do you keep a money-box?'
     'Yes, Ma'am,' returned  Rob; 'I'm saving up, against I've got enough to
put in the Bank, Ma'am.
     'Very laudable  indeed,' said Miss Tox. 'I'm glad to  hear it. Put this
half-crown into it, if you please.'
     'Oh  thank you, Ma'am,' replied Rob, 'but  really  I  couldn't think of
depriving you.'
     'I commend  your  independent  spirit,' said  Miss Tox,  'but  it's  no
deprivation, I  assure you. I shall  be offended if you  don't take it, as a
mark of my good-will. Good-night, Robin.'
     'Good-night, Ma'am,' said Rob, 'and thank you!'
     Who ran sniggering off to get change, and tossed it away with a pieman.
But they never taught honour at the Grinders' School, where the  system that
prevailed was particularly strong in the engendering of hypocrisy. Insomuch,
that many of the friends and masters  of past Grinders  said,  if this  were
what  came of education for the common  people, let us have none. Some  more
rational  said,  let us have a better one. But the  governing  powers of the
Grinders' Company were always ready  for them, by picking out a few boys who
had turned out well in spite of the system,  and roundly asserting that they
could have only turned out well because of it. Which settled the business of
those objectors out  of  hand,  and established the glory of  the  Grinders'
Institution.

        CHAPTER 39.
     Further Adventures of Captain Edward Cuttle, Mariner

     Time, sure of foot and strong of will, had  so pressed onward, that the
year  enjoined by  the  old Instrument-maker,  as  the term during which his
friend should refrain from opening the sealed packet accompanying the letter
he  had  left for him, was now nearly expired,  and Captain  Cuttle began to
look at it, of an evening, with feelings of mystery and uneasiness
     The  Captain, in his honour, would as soon have thought  of opening the
parcel one hour before the  expiration of the term, as he would have thought
of opening himself, to study his own anatomy. He merely brought it out, at a
certain stage  of his first  evening  pipe, laid  it on  the table,  and sat
gazing at the outside of it,  through  the smoke, in silent gravity, for two
or three hours at a spell. Sometimes, when he had contemplated it thus for a
pretty long  while, the Captain would  hitch his  chair, by degrees, farther
and  farther off, as  if to get beyond the range of its fascination; but  if
this were his design, he never succeeded: for even when he was brought up by
the  parlour  wall,  the packet  still  attracted  him; or if  his eyes,  in
thoughtful  wandering,  roved  to  the  ceiling  or   the  fire,  its  image
immediately followed, and posted itself  conspicuously  among the coals,  or
took up an advantageous position on the whitewash.
     In  respect of Heart's  Delight, the Captain's parental and  admiration
knew no change. But since his last interview with Mr Carker, Captain  Cuttle
had come to entertain  doubts whether his former  intervention in behalf  of
that young lady and his dear boy Wal'r, had  proved altogether so favourable
as  he could  have wished, and as  he at the time believed. The Captain  was
troubled with a  serious misgiving that he had done more harm than  good, in
short; and in his remorse  and modesty  he made  the best atonement he could
think of, by putting himself  out of  the way of  doing  any harm to anyone,
and, as it were, throwing himself overboard for a dangerous person.
     Self-buried, therefore, among  the  instruments, the Captain never went
near Mr Dombey's house, or reported himself  in any way  to Florence or Miss
Nipper. He  even severed himself from Mr  Perch, on the occasion of his next
visit, by dryly  informing  that  gentleman,  that  he thanked  him  for his
company, but had cut himself adrift from all such acquaintance, as he didn't
know  what magazine  he  mightn't blow up, without  meaning of  it. In  this
self-imposed  retirement, the Captain  passed  whole days and  weeks without
interchanging  a word with anyone but Rob the Grinder, whom he esteemed as a
pattern  of  disinterested attachment and fidelity. In  this retirement, the
Captain, gazing at the packet of an evening, would sit smoking, and thinking
of Florence and poor Walter, until  they  both seemed to his homely fancy to
be dead, and to  have  passed  away into eternal  youth, the  beautiful  and
innocent children of his first remembrance.
     The  Captain  did  not,  however,  in  his  musings,  neglect  his  own
improvement, or the  mental culture of Rob the  Grinder. That  young man was
generally required to read out  of some book  to the  Captain, for one hour,
every  evening; and as the  Captain implicitly believed that all  books were
true, he accumulated, by  this  means,  many  remarkable  facts.  On  Sunday
nights, the Captain always read for himself, before going to  bed, a certain
Divine Sermon once delivered on a Mount;  and although he was accustomed  to
quote the text, without book, after his own manner, he appeared to  read  it
with as  reverent an understanding  of its heavenly spirit, as if he had got
it  all by heart in Greek, and had  been able to write any number of  fierce
theological disquisitions on its every phrase.
     Rob the  Grinder, whose  reverence for the inspired writings, under the
admirable system of  the Grinders' School, had been developed by a perpetual
bruising of his intellectual shins against all  the proper  names of all the
tribes of Judah, and by the monotonous repetition of hard verses, especially
by way of punishment, and by the parading of him at six years old in leather
breeches, three times a Sunday, very  high up, in a  very hot church, with a
great organ  buzzing against his drowsy head, like an exceedingly busy bee -
Rob the Grinder made a mighty show of being  edified when the Captain ceased
to read,  and generally yawned and nodded while the reading was in progress.
The latter fact being never so much as suspected by the good Captain.
     Captain  Cuttle, also, as a man of business;  took to keeping books. In
these he  entered  observations on the weather,  and on  the currents of the
waggons  and other  vehicles:  which he  observed,  in that quarter, to  set
westward in the morning and during the greater part of the day, and eastward
towards  the  evening. Two  or three stragglers appearing in one  week,  who
'spoke him' - so the Captain entered it- on  the subject  of spectacles, and
who,  without positively  purchasing,  said they  would look in  again,  the
Captain decided that the  business was improving, and  made  an entry in the
day-book  to that effect:  the  wind  then blowing (which he first recorded)
pretty fresh, west and by north; having changed in the night.
     One  of the  Captain's  chief  difficulties  was  Mr  Toots, who called
frequently,  and who without  saying much seemed to have  an  idea that  the
little back parlour was an eligible room  to chuckle in, as he would sit and
avail  himself  of  its  accommodations  in  that  regard by  the  half-hour
together,  without  at all  advancing  in  intimacy  with  the Captain.  The
Captain, rendered  cautious  by his  late  experience,  was unable  quite to
satisfy his mind whether Mr Toots was the mild subject he appeared to be, or
was a profoundly artful and dissimulating hypocrite. His frequent  reference
to Miss Dombey was suspicious; but the  Captain had a secret kindness for Mr
Toots's  apparent reliance on him, and forbore to decide against him for the
present; merely eyeing him, with a sagacity not to be described, whenever he
approached the subject that was nearest to his heart.
     'Captain Gills,' blurted out Mr  Toots, one  day all at  once,  as  his
manner  was, 'do you think you could think favourably of that proposition of
mine, and give me the pleasure of your acquaintance?'
     'Why, I tell you  what it is, my lad,' replied  the Captain, who had at
length  concluded on a  course of  action;  'I've been  turning that  there,
over.'
     'Captain Gills, it's  very kind  of you,'  retorted Mr Toots. 'I'm much
obliged to  you. Upon  my word  and  honour, Captain  Gills, it  would  be a
charity to give me the pleasure of your acquaintance. It really would.'
     'You see, brother,' argued the Captain slowly, 'I don't know you.
     'But you never can know me, Captain Gills,' replied Mr Toots, steadfast
to his point, 'if you don't give me the pleasure of your acquaintance.
     The Captain seemed struck by the originality  and power of this remark,
and looked at Mr Toots  as if he  thought there was a great deal more in him
than he had expected.
     'Well   said,  my  lad,'  observed  the  Captain,   nodding   his  head
thoughtfully;  'and true. Now look'ee here: You've made some observations to
me, which gives  me to  understand as  you admire  a  certain sweet creetur.
Hey?'
     'Captain Gills,' said Mr  Toots, gesticulating violently with  the hand
in which he held his hat, 'Admiration is not  the word. Upon my honour,  you
have no  conception what my feelings are. If I could be dyed black, and made
Miss Dombey's slave, I should consider it a compliment. If, at the sacrifice
of all my property, I could get transmigrated into Miss Dombey's dog - I - I
really think I  should  never leave off  wagging  my  tail. I  should  be so
perfectly happy, Captain Gills!'
     Mr  Toots said it with watery  eyes,  and pressed his  hat against  his
bosom with deep emotion.
     'My lad,'  returned the Captain,  moved to  compassion, 'if  you're  in
arnest -
     'Captain Gills,' cried Mr Toots, 'I'm in such a  state of mind,  and am
so dreadfully in earnest, that if I  could  swear to  it upon a hot piece of
iron, or a live coal, or melted lead, or burning sealing-wax, Or anything of
that sort, I should be glad to hurt myself, as a relief to my feelings.' And
Mr  Toots  looked  hurriedly about the  room,  as  if  for some sufficiently
painful means of accomplishing his dread purpose.
     The Captain pushed his  glazed hat back upon his head, stroked his face
down with his heavy hand - making his nose more mottled in the process - and
planting himself before Mr Toots,  and hooking him by the lapel of his coat,
addressed him in these words,  while Mr Toots  looked up into his face, with
much attention and some wonder.
     'If you're in arnest, you  see,  my lad,' said the  Captain, 'you're  a
object  of clemency, and clemency  is the brightest jewel in  the crown of a
Briton's head, for which you'll overhaul the  constitution as  laid  down in
Rule Britannia, and, when found,  that  is the charter as them garden angels
was a singing of, so many times over. Stand by! This here proposal o' you'rn
takes  me  a  little aback.  And  why?  Because I  holds  my  own only,  you
understand, in these here waters, and haven't got  no  consort, and  may  be
don't  wish for none. Steady! You hailed me first,  along of a certain young
lady, as  you was chartered by. Now if  you and me is to  keep one another's
company  at all,  that  there young creetur's name must never  be named  nor
referred to. I  don't know what harm  mayn't have been done by naming of  it
too free, afore now, and thereby  I brings up short. D'ye make me out pretty
clear, brother?'
     'Well, you'll excuse me, Captain Gills,' replied  Mr Toots, 'if I don't
quite follow you sometimes. But upon my  word I - it's a hard thing, Captain
Gills,  not to be able  to mention Miss  Dombey.  I really have  got  such a
dreadful load here!' - Mr Toots  pathetically  touched  his shirt-front with
both hands  - 'that I feel night and day, exactly as if somebody was sitting
upon me.
     'Them,' said the Captain,  'is the terms I  offer. If they're hard upon
you, brother, as mayhap they are, give 'em a wide berth, sheer off, and part
company cheerily!'
     'Captain Gills,' returned Mr Toots, 'I hardly know how it is, but after
what you told me when I came  here, for the first time, I - I  feel that I'd
rather think about Miss Dombey in your society than talk about her in almost
anybody else's. Therefore, Captain Gills, if you'll give  me the pleasure of
your  acquaintance,  I  shall  be  very  happy  to  accept  it  on  your own
conditions. I wish to be honourable, Captain Gills,' said Mr Toots,  holding
back his extended hand for a moment, 'and therefore I am obliged to say that
I can not help thinking about Miss Dombey. It's impossible for me  to make a
promise not to think about her.'
     'My lad,' said the Captain, whose opinion of Mr Toots was much improved
by this candid avowal, 'a man's thoughts is like the winds, and nobody can't
answer for 'em for certain, any length  of time together. Is  it a treaty as
to words?'
     'As to words, Captain  Gills,' returned  Mr  Toots, 'I think I can bind
myself.'
     Mr Toots gave Captain Cuttle his hand upon it, then and  there; and the
Captain  with a pleasant  and  gracious show of  condescension, bestowed his
acquaintance  upon him formally. Mr Toots seemed much relieved and gladdened
by the acquisition,  and  chuckled  rapturously  during the remainder of his
visit.  The  Captain,  for his  part, was not  ill  pleased  to  occupy that
position  of  patronage,  and was  exceedingly well  satisfied  by  his  own
prudence and foresight.
     But  rich as Captain Cuttle was  in the  latter quality, he  received a
surprise that  same evening from a no less ingenuous and  simple youth, than
Rob  the  Grinder. That artless lad,  drinking  tea  at  the same table, and
bending  meekly over his cup and saucer, having taken sidelong  observations
of  his master for  some time,  who was  reading  the  newspaper  with great
difficulty, but much dignity, through his glasses, broke silence by saying -
     'Oh! I  beg  your  pardon,  Captain,  but you mayn't be in want of  any
pigeons, may you, Sir?'
     'No, my lad,' replied the Captain.
     'Because I was wishing to dispose of mine, Captain,' said Rob.
     'Ay, ay?' cried the Captain, lifting up his bushy eyebrows a little.
     'Yes; I'm going, Captain, if you please,' said Rob.
     'Going? Where are  you going?' asked  the Captain, looking round at him
over the glasses.
     'What? didn't you  know that I was  going to leave you, Captain?' asked
Rob, with a sneaking smile.
     The  Captain put  down  the paper, took off his spectacles, and brought
his eyes to bear on the deserter.
     'Oh yes, Captain, I am going to give you warning.  I thought you'd have
known that beforehand, perhaps,'  said Rob, rubbing his  hands, and  getting
up. 'If you could be so  good as provide yourself soon, Captain, it would be
a  great convenience  to  me. You  couldn't  provide yourself  by  to-morrow
morning, I am afraid, Captain: could you, do you think?'
     'And you're a going to desert your  colours, are you, my lad?' said the
Captain, after a long examination of his face.
     'Oh,  it's  very hard upon  a  cove,  Captain,' cried the  tender  Rob,
injured and  indignant in  a  moment, 'that he  can't  give lawful  warning,
without being frowned at in that way, and called a deserter. You haven't any
right to call a poor cove names, Captain. It ain't because I'm a servant and
you're  a master,  that  you're to go and libel me.  What wrong have I done?
Come, Captain, let me know what my crime is, will you?'
     The stricken Grinder wept, and put his coat-cuff in his eye.
     'Come,  Captain,'  cried the injured youth, 'give my crime a name! What
have  I been and done? Have  I stolen any  of the  property? have I set  the
house a-fire? If I have, why don't you give me in charge, and try it? But to
take away the character of a lad that's been a good servant  to you, because
he can't afford to stand  in his own light for  your good, what  a injury it
is, and what a bad return for faithful service! This is  the way young coves
is spiled and drove wrong. I wonder at you, Captain, I do.'
     All of  which  the Grinder  howled  forth  in  a lachrymose whine,  and
backing carefully towards the door.
     'And so you've got another berth, have you, my  lad?' said the Captain,
eyeing him intently.
     'Yes,  Captain, since  you  put it  in  that shape, I have  got another
berth,' cried Rob, backing more and more; 'a  better  berth  than  I've  got
here, and  one where I don't so much as want your good word,  Captain, which
is fort'nate for me,  after  all the dirt you've throw'd  at me, because I'm
poor, and can't afford to stand in my own  light for your  good. Yes, I have
got another berth; and if it wasn't for leaving you unprovided, Captain, I'd
go to it now,  sooner than I'd take them names  from  you, because I'm poor,
and can't afford to stand in my own light for your good. Why do you reproach
me for  being poor, and not standing in my own light for your good, Captain?
How can you so demean yourself?'
     'Look ye here, my boy,' replied the  peaceful Captain.  'Don't you  pay
out no more of them words.'
     'Well, then, don't you pay in no more of your words, Captain,' retorted
the roused innocent, getting louder in his whine, and backing into the shop.
'I'd sooner you took my blood than my character.'
     'Because,' pursued the Captain calmly, 'you have heerd, may be, of such
a thing as a rope's end.'
     'Oh,  have  I though,  Captain?' cried  the  taunting  Grinder.  'No  I
haven't. I never heerd of any such a article!'
     'Well,' said  the Captain, 'it's my belief as you'll know more about it
pretty soon,  if you don't keep  a bright look-out. I can read your signals,
my lad. You may go.'
     'Oh!  I  may go  at once, may I,  Captain?' cried  Rob, exulting in his
success. 'But  mind! I never asked to go at once,  Captain.  You  are not to
take  away my character  again,  because you send me off of your own accord.
And you're not to stop any of my wages, Captain!'
     His employer settled the last  point by producing the  tin canister and
telling  the Grinder's money out in full upon the table. Rob, snivelling and
sobbing, and  grievously wounded in his feelings, took up  the pieces one by
one, with a sob and a snivel for each, and tied them up separately in  knots
in  his pockethandkerchief; then he  ascended to the  roof  of the house and
filled  his  hat  and pockets with pigeons; then, came down to his bed under
the counter and made up his bundle, snivelling and  sobbing louder, as if he
were  cut to  the heart by old  associations;  then he  whined, 'Good-night,
Captain.  I  leave  you  without  malice!'  and then,  going  out  upon  the
door-step,  pulled the little Midshipman's nose as a  parting indignity, and
went away down the street grinning triumphantly.
     The Captain, left  to himself, resumed his  perusal  of the  news as if
nothing unusual or unexpected had taken place, and  went reading on with the
greatest assiduity. But never  a word did Captain Cuttle  understand, though
he read a vast  number, for Rob the Grinder was scampering up one column and
down another all through the newspaper.
     It  is doubtful whether the worthy Captain  had ever felt himself quite
abandoned until now; but now,  old  Sol  Gills,  Walter, and Heart's Delight
were lost to him indeed, and now Mr Carker deceived and jeered  him cruelly.
They were all represented in the false Rob, to whom he had held forth many a
time on the recollections that were warm within him; he had believed  in the
false Rob, and  had been glad to  believe in him; he had made a companion of
him as the last of the old ship's company; he had taken  the  command of the
little Midshipman with him at his right hand; he had meant to do his duty by
him,  and  had  felt almost  as  kindly towards the boy as  if they had been
shipwrecked and  cast upon a desert place together. And now, that  the false
Rob  had brought distrust, treachery,  and meanness  into  the very parlour,
which  was a  kind  of sacred  place, Captain Cuttle felt as  if the parlour
might have gone  down next, and not surprised him much  by  its sinking,  or
given him any very great concern.
     Therefore Captain Cuttle read the newspaper with profound attention and
no  comprehension, and therefore Captain  Cuttle said nothing whatever about
Rob  to  himself, or admitted  to himself that he was thinking about him, or
would recognise in the most distant manner that  Rob had anything to do with
his feeling as lonely as Robinson Crusoe.
     In the same composed,  business-like  way, the Captain stepped over  to
Leadenhall  Market in the dusk,  and effected  an arrangement with a private
watchman on duty there, to come and put up and take down the shutters of the
wooden  Midshipman  every  night  and  morning.  He  then called in  at  the
eating-house to diminish by one half  the daily rations theretofore supplied
to the Midshipman,  and at the  public-house to stop the traitor's beer. 'My
young  man,' said the Captain, in explanation to the young lady at  the bar,
'my  young man having bettered himself, Miss.' Lastly, the Captain  resolved
to take possession  of the  bed under  the counter, and to  turn in there o'
nights instead of upstairs, as sole guardian of the property.
     From this bed Captain Cuttle daily rose thenceforth, and clapped on his
glazed hat at six o'clock in the morning, with the  solitary air  of  Crusoe
finishing  his  toilet with his goat-skin cap;  and although his fears  of a
visitation  from the  savage  tribe, MacStinger,  were  somewhat cooled,  as
similar apprehensions on  the part  of that lone  mariner used to  be by the
lapse  of a  long interval without any symptoms of  the cannibals, he  still
observed a regular  routine of defensive operations, and never encountered a
bonnet without  previous survey from his castle of retreat.  In the meantime
(during which he received no call from Mr Toots, who wrote to say he was out
of town)  his own voice  began to  have  a strange sound in his ears; and he
acquired such habits of profound meditation from  much polishing and stowing
away  of the stock, and from much  sitting  behind the  counter reading,  or
looking  out of  window, that the red  rim made  on his forehead by the hard
glazed hat, sometimes ached again with excess of reflection.
     The year being now  expired, Captain Cuttle deemed it expedient to open
the packet; but as he had  always designed doing this in the presence of Rob
the Grinder, who had brought it to him, and as he  had an idea that it would
be regular  and ship-shape to open  it  in the presence  of somebody, he was
sadly put to it for want of a witness. In this difficulty, he hailed one day
with unusual  delight the announcement in  the Shipping Intelligence of  the
arrival of the  Cautious Clara, Captain John Bunsby, from a coasting voyage;
and  to that philosopher immediately  dispatched a letter by post, enjoining
inviolable  secrecy as  to his  place  of  residence, and  requesting  to be
favoured with an early visit, in the evening season.
     Bunsby, who was one  of those sages who act upon conviction,  took some
days to get the conviction thoroughly into his mind, that he  had received a
letter to this  effect. But when he had grappled with the fact, and mastered
it, he promptly sent his boy with the message, 'He's a coming to-night.' Who
being instructed to deliver those words and disappear, fulfilled his mission
like a tarry spirit, charged with a mysterious warning.
     The Captain, well pleased to receive it,  made preparation of pipes and
rum and water, and  awaited his visitor in the back parlour.  At the hour of
eight,  a  deep  lowing, as  of  a  nautical  Bull, outside  the  shop-door,
succeeded  by  the  knocking  of a  stick  on  the  panel, announced  to the
listening  ear  of Captain  Cuttle,  that  Bunsby  was  alongside;  whom  he
instantly admitted,  shaggy and  loose, and with his stolid mahogany visage,
as usual, appearing to have no consciousness of  anything before it,  but to
be attentively observing something that  was  taking  place in quite another
part of the world.
     'Bunsby,' said  the Captain, grasping him by the  hand, 'what cheer, my
lad, what cheer?'
     'Shipmet,'  replied the voice within Bunsby,  unaccompanied by any sign
on the part of the Commander himself, 'hearty, hearty.'
     'Bunsby!'  said the Captain,  rendering  irrepressible  homage  to  his
genius, 'here you  are! a  man as can give  an opinion  as  is brighter than
di'monds - and give me the lad with the  tarry trousers as shines to me like
di'monds bright, for which  you'll overhaul the Stanfell's  Budget, and when
found make a note.' Here you are, a man as gave an opinion in this here very
place, that has come true, every letter  on it,' which the Captain sincerely
believed.
     'Ay, ay?' growled Bunsby.
     'Every letter,' said the Captain.
     'For why?'  growled Bunsby,  looking at his  friend for the first time.
'Which  way? If so, why not? Therefore.'  With these  oracular  words - they
seemed almost to make the Captain giddy; they launched  him upon  such a sea
of speculation and conjecture - the sage submitted to be helped off with his
pilot-coat, and accompanied his friend into the back parlour, where his hand
presently alighted on the rum-bottle, from which he brewed a  stiff glass of
grog;  and presently afterwards on  a pipe,  which  he  filled, lighted, and
began to smoke.
     Captain  Cuttle,  imitating  his  visitor  in   the   matter  of  these
particulars, though the rapt and imperturbable manner of the great Commander
was  far above  his  powers, sat  in  the  opposite  corner of the fireside,
observing him respectfully, and as  if  he waited for some encouragement  or
expression of curiosity  on Bunsby's  part which  should lead him to his own
affairs. But  as the mahogany philosopher gave no evidence of being sentient
of anything but warmth and tobacco, except once, when taking his  pipe  from
his lips to make room for his glass, he incidentally remarked with exceeding
gruffness, that his name was  Jack Bunsby - a declaration that presented but
small opening for conversation  - the Captain  bespeaking his attention in a
short  complimentary exordium,  narrated  the  whole history of  Uncle Sol's
departure, with the change it had produced in his own life and fortunes; and
concluded by placing the packet on the table.
     After a long pause, Mr Bunsby nodded his head.
     'Open?' said the Captain.
     Bunsby nodded again.
     The Captain  accordingly  broke the  seal, and  disclosed to  view  two
folded papers, of which he severally read the endorsements, thus: 'Last Will
and Testament of Solomon Gills.' 'Letter for Ned Cuttle.'
     Bunsby, with  his  eye on the coast  of Greenland, seemed to listen for
the contents. The Captain therefore hemmed to clear his throat, and read the
letter aloud.
     '"My dear Ned Cuttle. When I left home for the West Indies" - '
     Here the Captain stopped, and looked hard at Bunsby, who looked fixedly
at the coast of Greenland.
     '  - "in forlorn search of intelligence of my dear boy, I knew that  if
you  were acquainted with  my design,  you would thwart it, or accompany me;
and  therefore  I  kept it secret.  If you ever read this letter,  Ned, I am
likely to be dead. You will easily forgive  an old  friend's folly then, and
will feel for the restlessness and uncertainty in which  he wandered away on
such a wild voyage. So no more  of that. I have little hope that my poor boy
will ever read these words, or gladden your eyes with the sight of his frank
face  any  more."  No,  no;  no  more,'  said  Captain  Cuttle,  sorrowfully
meditating; 'no more. There he lays, all his days - '
     Mr  Bunsby,  who  had a musical ear, suddenly bellowed, 'In the Bays of
Biscay, O!' which so affected the good Captain, as an appropriate tribute to
departed worth, that he shook him by  the  hand in  acknowledgment,  and was
fain to wipe his eyes.
     'Well, well!'  said the Captain with a  sigh,  as the Lament  of Bunsby
ceased  to ring and vibrate in the skylight. 'Affliction  sore, long time he
bore, and let us overhaul the wollume, and there find it.'
     'Physicians,' observed Bunsby, 'was in vain."
     'Ay, ay, to be sure,' said the Captain, 'what's the good o' them in two
or three  hundred fathoms o' water!' Then, returning to the letter, he  read
on:  -  '"But  if  he  should be  by,  when  it  is  opened;"'  the  Captain
involuntarily looked round,  and shook his head;  '"or should know  of it at
any other time;"' the Captain shook his head again; '"my blessing on him! In
case the accompanying paper  is not legally written, it matters very little,
for there is no one interested but you and he, and my plain wish is, that if
he is living he should  have what little there  may be,  and if  (as I fear)
otherwise, that you  should have it, Ned.  You will respect my wish, I know.
God bless you  for it, and for all  your  friendliness  besides,  to Solomon
Gills." Bunsby!' said the Captain, appealing to  him solemnly,  'what do you
make of  this? There you sit, a man as  has had  his head broke from infancy
up'ards, and has got a new opinion into it at every seam as has been opened.
Now, what do you make o' this?'
     'If  so be,'  returned Bunsby, with unusual promptitude, 'as he's dead,
my opinion is he won't come back no more. If so be as he's alive, my opinion
is he will. Do I say he will? No. Why  not?  Because  the  bearings  of this
obserwation lays in the application on it.'
     'Bunsby!'  said  Captain  Cuttle, who would seem to have  estimated the
value of his distinguished  friend's opinions in proportion to the immensity
of  the difficulty he experienced in making anything out of  them; 'Bunsby,'
said  the Captain, quite  confounded  by admiration, 'you carry  a weight of
mind easy, as would swamp one of my tonnage soon. But in regard o' this here
will, I don't  mean to take  no steps towards  the property - Lord forbid! -
except  to keep it for a more rightful owner; and I hope yet as the rightful
owner, Sol Gills, is living and'll come back, strange as it is that he ain't
forwarded no dispatches. Now, what is your opinion, Bunsby, as to stowing of
these here papers away again, and marking outside as they was opened, such a
day, in the presence of John Bunsby and Ed'ard Cuttle?'
     Bunsby, descrying no objection, on the coast of Greenland or elsewhere,
to this  proposal,  it  was carried  into execution;  and  that  great  man,
bringing his eye into the present  for a moment, affixed his  sign-manual to
the cover, totally abstaining, with characteristic modesty, from the  use of
capital  letters.  Captain  Cuttle,  having  attached  his  own  left-handed
signature, and locked up the packet in the iron safe, entreated his guest to
mix another glass and smoke another pipe; and doing the like himself, fell a
musing   over  the  fire  on  the   possible  fortunes  of   the  poor   old
Instrument-maker.
     And now  a surprise occurred, so overwhelming and terrific that Captain
Cuttle,  unsupported  by the  presence of Bunsby, must have sunk beneath it,
and been a lost man from that fatal hour.
     How the  Captain, even in the  satisfaction of  admitting such a guest,
could have only shut the door, and not locked it, of which negligence he was
undoubtedly guilty, is one of those questions that must for ever remain mere
points  of speculation,  or  vague  charges  against  destiny.  But by  that
unlocked  door, at this quiet moment, did  the fell MacStinger dash into the
parlour, bringing  Alexander  MacStinger in her parental arms, and confusion
and vengeance  (not  to  mention Juliana MacStinger, and the  sweet  child's
brother,  Charles  MacStinger,  popularly  known  about the  scenes  of  his
youthful  sports,  as Chowley) in  her train.  She  came  so swiftly  and so
silently, like a rushing air from the neighbourhood of the East India Docks,
that Captain Cuttle found himself in the very act of sitting looking at her,
before the calm face with which  he  had been meditating,  changed to one of
horror and dismay.
     But the  moment  Captain  Cuttle understood  the  full  extent  of  his
misfortune, self-preservation dictated an attempt at flight.  Darting at the
little  door which  opened from  the  parlour on the steep little  range  of
cellar-steps, the Captain made a rush, head-foremost, at the latter, like  a
man  indifferent to bruises and  contusions, who only sought to hide himself
in  the bowels  of the earth. In this gallant  effort he would probably have
succeeded, but for the affectionate dispositions of Juliana and Chowley, who
pinning  him by the legs - one of those dear  children holding on  to each -
claimed him as their friend, with  lamentable cries.  In  the  meantime, Mrs
MacStinger,  who  never  entered  upon  any  action  of  importance  without
previously inverting Alexander MacStinger, to bring him within  the range of
a brisk battery  of slaps, and then  sitting him down to cool  as the reader
first beheld him, performed that solemn rite, as if on this occasion it were
a  sacrifice  to the  Furies; and having deposited the victim  on the floor,
made at the Captain  with a strength of  purpose that  appeared  to threaten
scratches to the interposing Bunsby.
     The  cries of  the  two  elder MacStingers,  and the  wailing  of young
Alexander, who may be said to have passed a piebald  childhood, forasmuch as
he was black in the face during one half of that fairy period  of existence,
combined  to make this visitation the more awful.  But when  silence reigned
again,  and the Captain, in a violent perspiration,  stood meekly looking at
Mrs MacStinger, its terrors were at their height.
     'Oh,  Cap'en Cuttle, Cap'en Cuttle!' said  Mrs  MacStinger,  making her
chin rigid, and shaking it in unison with what, but for the weakness  of her
sex, might be described as her  fist. 'Oh, Cap'en Cuttle,  Cap'en Cuttle, do
you dare to look me in the face, and not be struck down in the herth!'
     The Captain, who looked anything but daring, feebly muttered 'Standby!'
     'Oh  I was  a weak and  trusting  Fool when I  took you under  my roof,
Cap'en Cuttle, I was!' cried Mrs MacStinger. 'To think of the benefits  I've
showered on that man, and  the way in which I brought my children up to love
and honour him as if he was a father to 'em, when there ain't a housekeeper,
no nor a lodger in our street, don't know that I lost money by that man, and
by his guzzlings and his muzzlings' - Mrs MacStinger used the  last word for
the  joint  sake  of  alliteration and  aggravation,  rather  than  for  the
expression  of any idea - 'and  when they cried out one  and all, shame upon
him for putting upon an industrious woman, up early and late for the good of
her young family,  and keeping her  poor  place so  clean that a  individual
might  have ate his dinner, yes, and his tea too, if he was so disposed, off
any  one of the  floors  or  stairs, in spite of all his guzzlings  and  his
muzzlings, such was the care and pains bestowed upon him!'
     Mrs MacStinger stopped to  fetch her breath; and her  face flushed with
triumph in this second happy introduction of Captain Cuttle's muzzlings.
     'And he runs awa-a-a-y!'cried Mrs MacStinger, with a lengthening out of
the  last  syllable that made the unfortunate Captain  regard himself as the
meanest of men; 'and keeps away a twelve-month! From  a woman!  Such  is his
conscience! He  hasn't the courage  to  meet  her hi-i-igh;'  long  syllable
again; 'but steals away, like a felion. Why, if that baby of mine,' said Mrs
MacStinger, with sudden rapidity, 'was to offer to go and steal away, I'd do
my duty as a mother by him, till he was covered with wales!'
     The young Alexander,  interpreting this into a positive  promise, to be
shortly redeemed, tumbled over with fear and grief, and  lay upon the floor,
exhibiting the soles of his shoes and making such  a deafening outcry,  that
Mrs MacStinger found it  necessary to take him up in  her  arms,  where  she
quieted him,  ever  and anon, as he broke out again, by  a shake that seemed
enough to loosen his teeth.
     'A pretty sort of a man is Cap'en  Cuttle,' said Mrs MacStinger, with a
sharp stress on the first  syllable of the Captain's name, 'to take on for -
and  to lose sleep for- and to faint along of-  and to think dead forsooth -
and  to go up  and down the blessed town like a madwoman,  asking  questions
after! Oh, a pretty sort of a man! Ha ha ha ha! He's worth all that  trouble
and distress of mind, and much more. That's nothing, bless you! Ha ha ha ha!
Cap'en  Cuttle,' said Mrs MacStinger, with severe reaction in her voice  and
manner, 'I wish to know if you're a-coming home.
     The frightened Captain looked into his hat, as if he saw nothing for it
but to put it on, and give himself up.
     'Cap'en Cuttle,'  repeated  Mrs  MacStinger,  in  the  same  determined
manner, 'I wish to know if you're a-coming home, Sir.'
     The  Captain seemed quite ready to go,  but faintly suggested something
to the effect of 'not making so much noise about it.'
     'Ay, ay, ay,' said Bunsby, in a soothing tone. 'Awast, my lass, awast!'
     'And  who  may  you be, if  you please!'  retorted Mrs MacStinger, with
chaste loftiness.  'Did you ever lodge at Number Nine, Brig  Place, Sir?  My
memory may be bad, but not with me, I think.  There was a Mrs  Jollson lived
at Number  Nine before me, and perhaps you're mistaking me for her.  That is
my only ways of accounting for your familiarity, Sir.'
     'Come, come, my lass, awast, awast!' said Bunsby.
     Captain Cuttle could hardly believe it, even of this great man,  though
he saw  it done with his waking eyes; but Bunsby, advancing boldly,  put his
shaggy blue  arm round Mrs MacStinger, and so  softened her by his magic way
of doing it, and by these few words - he said no more - that she melted into
tears, after looking upon him for a few  moments, and observed that a  child
might conquer her now, she was so low in her courage.
     Speechless and  utterly amazed, the Captain  saw him gradually persuade
this inexorable woman into the shop,  return for rum and water and a candle,
take  them to  her, and  pacify  her  without appearing to  utter  one word.
Presently  he  looked  in  with his  pilot-coat  on, and said, 'Cuttle,  I'm
a-going to  act as convoy home;' and  Captain  Cuttle, more to his confusion
than if he had been  put in irons himself, for safe transport to Brig Place,
saw the family pacifically filing off, with Mrs MacStinger at their head. He
had  scarcely  time  to take down his canister,  and stealthily convey  some
money  into  the  hands  of Juliana  MacStinger, his former  favourite,  and
Chowley,  who  had the  claim upon  him that he was naturally of a  maritime
build,  before  the  Midshipman  was  abandoned  by  them  all;  and  Bunsby
whispering that he'd carry  on  smart, and hail  Ned Cuttle  again before he
went aboard, shut the door upon himself, as the last member of the party.
     Some uneasy ideas that he must be walking in his  sleep, or that he had
been troubled with phantoms, and not a family of flesh and blood,  beset the
Captain at first, when he went back to the little parlour, and found himself
alone. Illimitable faith in, and  immeasurable  admiration of, the Commander
of the  Cautious Clara,  succeeded, and  threw the Captain into a  wondering
trance.
     Still,  as  time wore on,  and Bunsby failed to reappear,  the  Captain
began to  entertain uncomfortable doubts of another kind. Whether Bunsby had
been artfully decoyed to Brig Place, and was there detained  in safe custody
as hostage for  his friend; in which case it would become the  Captain, as a
man of honour, to  release him, by the sacrifice of his own liberty. Whether
he had been attacked and defeated by Mrs MacStinger, and was ashamed to show
himself  after his discomfiture. Whether Mrs MacStinger,  thinking better of
it,  in  the  uncertainty  of  her  temper, had  turned  back  to  board the
Midshipman again, and Bunsby, pretending to conduct her  by a short cut, was
endeavouring  to  lose  the family  amid the wilds  and savage places of the
City. Above all, what it would behove him, Captain Cuttle, to do, in case of
his hearing no more, either of the MacStingers or of Bunsby, which, in these
wonderful and unforeseen conjunctions of events, might possibly happen.
     He debated all this until he was tired; and still no Bunsby. He made up
his bed under the counter, all ready for turning in; and still no Bunsby. At
length, when  the Captain had given him up, for that night at least, and had
begun to undress, the sound of approaching  wheels was heard,  and, stopping
at the door, was succeeded by Bunsby's hail.
     The Captain trembled to think that Mrs MacStinger was not to be got rid
of, and had been brought back in a coach.
     But  no.  Bunsby was accompanied by nothing  but a large box,  which he
hauled  into the shop with  his own  hands, and as soon as he had hauled in,
sat  upon.  Captain  Cuttle knew  it  for  the  chest  he had  left  at  Mrs
MacStinger's house, and looking, candle in hand, at Bunsby more attentively,
believed that he was three sheets in the wind, or, in plain words, drunk. It
was difficult, however, to be sure of this; the Commander having no trace of
expression in his face when sober.
     'Cuttle,'  said the  Commander, getting off the chest,  and opening the
lid, 'are these here your traps?'
     Captain Cuttle looked in and identified his property.
     'Done pretty taut and trim, hey, shipmet?' said Bunsby.
     The grateful  and bewildered Captain grasped  him  by the hand, and was
launching  into a  reply expressive of his astonished feelings,  when Bunsby
disengaged  himself  by a jerk of his wrist, and seemed to make an effort to
wink  with  his revolving  eye, the only effect  of  which  attempt, in  his
condition, was nearly to over-balance him. He then abruptly opened the door,
and shot away to rejoin the Cautious  Clara  with all speed - supposed to be
his invariable custom, whenever he considered he had made a point.
     As it was not his humour to be often sought, Captain Cuttle decided not
to go or send to him next day, or until he should make his gracious pleasure
known in  such wise,  or failing that, until  some  little time should  have
lapsed. The Captain, therefore, renewed  his solitary life next morning, and
thought profoundly, many mornings, noons,  and nights, of old Sol Gills, and
Bunsby's sentiments concerning  him, and the hopes there were of his return.
Much of such thinking  strengthened  Captain Cuttle's hopes; and he humoured
them and  himself by watching for the Instrument-maker at the  door - as  he
ventured to do now, in  his strange liberty - and setting  his chair  in its
place, and arranging the little parlour as it used to be, in  case he should
come  home unexpectedly.  He likewise, in  his thoughtfulness,  took  down a
certain little miniature of Walter as a schoolboy, from its accustomed nail,
lest it should  shock  the old  man  on  his  return.  The Captain  had  his
presentiments,  too, sometimes, that  he would come on such  a day;  and one
particular  Sunday, even  ordered a  double  allowance of dinner, he  was so
sanguine.  But come,  old Solomon did  not; and still the neighbours noticed
how  the  seafaring man in  the  glazed hat,  stood at the shop-door  of  an
evening, looking up and down the street.

        CHAPTER 40.
     Domestic Relations

     It was  not in  the  nature of things that a  man of Mr  Dombey's mood,
opposed  to such  a spirit  as  he  had  raised  against himself,  should be
softened in  the  imperious asperity  of his  temper; or  that the cold hard
armour of  pride in  which he lived encased, should be made more flexible by
constant  collision with haughty scorn and defiance. It is the curse of such
a nature - it is a main  part  of the heavy retribution  on itself it  bears
within  itself  -  that  while  deference  and  concession  swell  its  evil
qualities, and are the food  it grows upon, resistance and  a questioning of
its exacting claims, foster it  too, no less. The  evil that  is in it finds
equally its means of growth and propagation in opposites.  It draws  support
and life from sweets  and bitters; bowed down before,  or unacknowledged, it
still enslaves the breast in which it  has its  throne;  and,  worshipped or
rejected, is as hard a master as the Devil in dark fables.
     Towards his first wife, Mr Dombey, in his cold and lofty arrogance, had
borne himself  like the removed Being he almost conceived  himself to be. He
had been 'Mr Dombey' with her when she first saw him, and he was 'Mr Dombey'
when she died.  He  had asserted his  greatness during  their  whole married
life, and  she had  meekly recognised  it.  He had kept  his distant seat of
state  on the top of his throne,  and she her  humble station  on its lowest
step; and  much good it had done him, so to live  in solitary bondage to his
one idea. He had imagined that the proud character of  his second wife would
have  been  added to  his own  -  would have merged into it, and exalted his
greatness.  He  had  pictured  himself  haughtier  than  ever, with  Edith's
haughtiness subservient to his. He  had never entertained the possibility of
its arraying itself against him. And now,  when  he found it rising  in  his
path at every step and turn of his daily life, fixing its cold, defiant, and
contemptuous  face upon him, this pride  of his,  instead  of  withering, or
hanging down its  head beneath the shock, put forth new shoots,  became more
concentrated and intense, more gloomy, sullen, irksome, and unyielding, than
it had ever been before.
     Who  wears  such  armour,  too,  bears  with  him  ever  another  heavy
retribution.  It is of  proof  against conciliation, love,  and  confidence;
against  all  gentle  sympathy from  without, all trust, all tenderness, all
soft emotion; but to deep stabs in the self-love, it is as vulnerable as the
bare breast to steel; and such tormenting festers rankle there, as follow on
no other wounds, no, though  dealt with the mailed  hand of Pride itself, on
weaker pride, disarmed and thrown down.
     Such wounds were his. He felt them sharply, in the solitude  of his old
rooms; whither he  now  began often to retire again, and  pass long solitary
hours. It  seemed his  fate to be ever proud and powerful;  ever humbled and
powerless where he would be most strong. Who seemed fated  to work  out that
doom?
     Who? Who was it who could win his wife as she had won his boy?  Who was
it who had shown him that new victory, as he sat in the dark corner? Who was
it  whose least word did what his  utmost  means could not? Who was it  who,
unaided by his love, regard or notice, thrived and grew beautiful when those
so  aided  died? Who could it be, but  the same  child at whom he had  often
glanced uneasily in her motherless  infancy, with a kind of  dread, lest  he
might come to hate her; and of whom his foreboding was fulfilled, for he DID
hate her in his heart?
     Yes, and he  would have it hatred, and he made  it  hatred, though some
sparkles of the light in  which she had appeared before him on the memorable
night of his return home with his Bride, occasionally hung about  her still.
He knew now that she was beautiful; he did not dispute that she was graceful
and winning, and that in  the bright dawn of her womanhood she had come upon
him, a  surprise. But  he  turned even this against  her. In his  sullen and
unwholesome  brooding,  the  unhappy man,  with  a  dull  perception of  his
alienation from all  hearts, and  a vague  yearning for what he had  all his
life repelled, made  a  distorted  picture  of  his rights  and wrongs,  and
justified  himself with it against her. The worthier she promised  to be  of
him, the  greater claim  he  was  disposed  to  antedate  upon  her duty and
submission. When had she ever  shown  him duty and submission? Did she grace
his life - or Edith's? Had her attractions been manifested first to him - or
Edith?  Why, he  and she had  never been, from her  birth,  like  father and
child!  They  had always been  estranged. She had crossed him every way  and
everywhere. She  was  leagued against  him  now. Her  very  beauty  softened
natures that were  obdurate to  him, and  insulted  him  with  an  unnatural
triumph.
     It may have been that in all this there were mutterings of an  awakened
feeling  in  his breast,  however  selfishly  aroused  by  his  position  of
disadvantage, in comparison with what she might have made his life.  But  he
silenced the distant  thunder with the rolling of his sea of pride. He would
bear nothing  but his pride. And in  his pride, a heap of inconsistency, and
misery, and self-inflicted torment, he hated her.
     To  the moody,  stubborn, sullen  demon, that possessed him,  his  wife
opposed her different  pride in its full  force. They never could have led a
happy  life together;  but nothing could have made it more unhappy, than the
wilful and  determined  warfare of such  elements.  His pride was  set  upon
maintaining his magnificent  supremacy, and forcing  recognition  of it from
her. She would  have been racked to death, and turned but her haughty glance
of  calm inflexible  disdain  upon him, to the last.  Such recognition  from
Edith! He little knew through what a storm and  struggle she had been driven
onward to  the crowning honour  of his hand.  He little  knew how  much  she
thought she had conceded, when she suffered him to call her wife.
     Mr Dombey was resolved to show  her that he was supreme. There  must be
no will but his. Proud he desired that she should be, but she must be  proud
for, not against him. As he sat alone, hardening, he would often hear her go
out  and come home,  treading the round of London life with no more heed  of
his  liking or  disliking, pleasure or displeasure, than if  he had been her
groom.  Her  cold  supreme  indifference  -  his own  unquestioned attribute
usurped - stung him more than  any other  kind of treatment could have done;
and he determined to bend her to his magnificent and stately will.
     He  had  been  long communing with  these thoughts,  when  one night he
sought her in her own apartment,  after he  had heard her  return home late.
She was alone, in her brilliant dress, and had but that moment come from her
mother's  room. Her face was melancholy and pensive, when he  came upon her;
but it marked him at the door; for, glancing at the mirror before it, he saw
immediately,  as in a picture-frame,  the  knitted brow, and darkened beauty
that he knew so well.
     'Mrs Dombey,' he said, entering, 'I must beg leave to  have a few words
with you.'
     'To-morrow,' she replied.
     'There  is no time  like the present, Madam,' he returned. 'You mistake
your position. I am used to choose my own times; not to have them chosen for
me. I think you scarcely understand who and what I am, Mrs Dombey.
     'I think,' she answered, 'that I understand you very well.'
     She  looked upon  him  as  she  said so,  and  folding  her white arms,
sparkling  with gold  and gems, upon her swelling  breast,  turned away  her
eyes.
     If she  had been less handsome, and less stately in her cold composure,
she might  not have  had  the  power  of impressing  him with  the  sense of
disadvantage  that  penetrated  through his utmost pride.  But  she  had the
power, and he felt it  keenly.  He  glanced round  the  room:  saw  how  the
splendid  means  of personal  adornment,  and the  luxuries of  dress,  were
scattered  here  and  there,  and  disregarded;  not  in  mere  caprice  and
carelessness (or  so  he thought), but in  a steadfast haughty  disregard of
costly  things: and felt  it more and more. Chaplets of flowers,  plumes  of
feathers, jewels,  laces,  silks  and satins; look  where he  would, he  saw
riches, despised, poured out, and. made of no account. The very diamonds - a
marriage gift - that rose  and  fell  impatiently upon her bosom,  seemed to
pant to  break the chain that clasped them round her neck,  and roll down on
the floor where she might tread upon them.
     He  felt  his disadvantage, and  he showed it. Solemn and strange among
this  wealth of  colour  and  voluptuous  glitter, strange  and  constrained
towards  its  haughty  mistress, whose  repellent beauty  it  repeated,  and
presented all around him, as  in  so many  fragments of  a  mirror,  he  was
conscious of  embarrassment and awkwardness.  Nothing that ministered to her
disdainful self-possession could fail to gall him. Galled and irritated with
himself, he sat down, and went on, in no improved humour:
     'Mrs  Dombey,  it  is  very  necessary  that  there   should   be  some
understanding  arrived at  between  us. Your  conduct  does  not please  me,
Madam.'
     She merely glanced at him again,  and again  averted her  eyes; but she
might have spoken for an hour, and expressed less.
     'I repeat, Mrs  Dombey,  does  not please  me.  I  have  already  taken
occasion to request that it may be corrected. I now insist upon it.'
     'You chose a fitting occasion for your first remonstrance, Sir, and you
adopt a fitting manner, and a  fitting  word for your second. You insist! To
me!'
     'Madam,' said Mr Dombey, with his most offensive air of  state, 'I have
made you my wife. You bear my  name. You are associated with my position and
my reputation. I will not say that the world in general may be  disposed  to
think you  honoured by that association; but I will say that I am accustomed
to "insist," to my connexions and dependents.'
     'Which may you be pleased to consider me? she asked.
     'Possibly  I may think that  my wife should  partake - or does partake,
and cannot help herself - of both characters, Mrs Dombey.'
     She bent her eyes upon him steadily, and set her trembling lips. He saw
her bosom throb, and  saw her face  flush and turn  white. All this he could
know, and did: but he could not know that  one  word was  whispering in  the
deep recesses  of  her heart,  to keep  her quiet;  and  that  the word  was
Florence.
     Blind  idiot, rushing to a precipice!  He thought she  stood in awe  of
him.
     'You are too expensive,  Madam,' said Mr Dombey. 'You  are extravagant.
You waste a  great  deal of  money -  or  what would be a great deal in  the
pockets of most gentlemen - in cultivating a kind of society that is useless
to me,  and, indeed, that upon the whole  is  disagreeable to me. I  have to
insist upon a total change in all these respects. I know that in the novelty
of possessing a tithe of  such means as Fortune has placed at your disposal,
ladies are apt to run into a sudden extreme. There has been more than enough
of that extreme. I beg that Mrs Granger's very different experiences may now
come to the instruction of Mrs Dombey.'
     Still  the fixed look, the  trembling lips,  the  throbbing breast, the
face  now  crimson  and  now white;  and still  the  deep whisper  Florence,
Florence, speaking to her in the beating of her heart.
     His insolence of self-importance  dilated as he saw  this alteration in
her. Swollen no less by her past scorn of  him, and his so recent feeling of
disadvantage, than  by  her  present submission (as  he took  it to be),  it
became too mighty for his breast, and burst all bounds. Why,  who could long
resist his lofty will and pleasure! He had resolved to conquer her, and look
here!
     'You  will  further  please,  Madam,'  said Mr  Dombey,  in  a tone  of
sovereign  command, 'to understand distinctly, that I am to be  deferred  to
and  obeyed. That I must have  a positive  show and  confession of deference
before  the world,  Madam. I  am used to this. I require  it as my right. In
short I will have  it. I consider it no unreasonable return for  the worldly
advancement that  has befallen  you; and I believe nobody will be surprised,
either at its being required  from you, or at  your making  it. - To Me - To
Me!' he added, with emphasis.
     No word from her. No change in her. Her eyes upon him.
     'I have  learnt from your  mother,  Mrs Dombey,' said Mr  Dombey,  with
magisterial  importance,  what no doubt you  know,  namely, that Brighton is
recommended for her health. Mr Carker has been so good
     She changed suddenly. Her face and  bosom glowed as if the red light of
an angry sunset had been flung upon them. Not unobservant of the change, and
putting his own interpretation upon it, Mr Dombey resumed:
     'Mr Carker has been so good as to go down and secure a house there, for
a  time. On  the return of the  establishment  to London, I  shall take such
steps for its better management as I consider necessary.  One of these, will
be  the  engagement at  Brighton  (if  it  is to  be effected),  of  a  very
respectable reduced person there,  a  Mrs Pipchin,  formerly  employed in  a
situation of trust in my family,  to  act as  housekeeper. An  establishment
like  this, presided over but  nominally, Mrs Dombey, requires  a  competent
head.'
     She  had changed her attitude before he arrived at these words, and now
sat - still looking at him fixedly - turning a bracelet round and round upon
her arm; not winding it about with a light, womanly touch, but  pressing and
dragging it over the smooth skin, until the white limb showed a bar of red.
     'I  observed,'  said Mr Dombey  - 'and  this concludes  what I  deem it
necessary to say to you at present,  Mrs Dombey - I observed a  moment  ago,
Madam, that my  allusion to Mr Carker was  received in a peculiar manner. On
the occasion of my happening  to  point out to you, before that confidential
agent, the objection  I  had to your mode of receiving my visitors, you were
pleased to  object to his presence. You will have to get  the better of that
objection,  Madam,  and  to accustom yourself to it  very  probably on  many
similar occasions;  unless you adopt the remedy which is  in your own hands,
of giving  me