I'm  to  have 'em for
tea. 'Well, it don't matter,' said Polly. 'Oh, thank'ee, Mrs Richards, don't
it!' returned  the sharp girl. 'Remembering, however,  if you'll be so good,
that Miss Floy's under my charge, and Master Paul's under your'n.'
     'But still we needn't quarrel,' said Polly.
     'Oh no, Mrs Richards,' rejoined Spitfire. 'Not at all, I don't wish it,
we  needn't stand upon that  footing, Miss Floy being a  permanency,  Master
Paul a temporary.'  Spitfire made use of none but comma pauses; shooting out
whatever she had to say in one sentence, and in one breath, if possible.
     'Miss Florence has just come home, hasn't she?' asked Polly.
     'Yes, Mrs Richards, just  come, and here, Miss Floy, before you've been
in the house a  quarter of an hour, you go a smearing your wet  face against
the expensive  mourning that  Mrs Richards is a wearing  for your Ma!'  With
this  remonstrance,  young  Spitfire, whose  real  name  was  Susan  Nipper,
detached the child from her new friend by a wrench - as if she were a tooth.
But she  seemed  to do  it, more  in  the excessively sharp exercise of  her
official functions, than with any deliberate unkindness.
     'She'll  be  quite  happy, now  she  has  come home again,' said Polly,
nodding to her with an encouraging smile upon her wholesome  face, 'and will
be so pleased to see her dear Papa to-night.'
     'Lork, Mrs  Richards!'  cried Miss  Nipper,  taking up her words with a
jerk. 'Don't. See her dear Papa indeed! I should like to see her do it!'
     'Won't she then?' asked Polly.
     'Lork, Mrs Richards, no, her  Pa's a  deal  too  wrapped up in somebody
else, and before there was a somebody else to be wrapped up in she never was
a favourite, girls  are thrown away  in this house,  Mrs Richards, I  assure
you.
     The  child  looked  quickly from one  nurse  to the other,  as  if  she
understood and felt what was said.
     'You surprise me!' cried Folly. 'Hasn't Mr Dombey seen her since - '
     'No,'  interrupted Susan  Nipper. 'Not once since, and he hadn't hardly
set his eyes upon her before that  for  months and months, and I don't think
he'd have known  her for his  own child if he had met her in the streets, or
would know her for  his  own child  if  he was to meet her  in  the  streets
to-morrow,  Mrs Richards, as to  me,' said Spitfire, with a giggle, 'I doubt
if he's aweer of my existence.'
     'Pretty dear!' said Richards; meaning, not Miss  Nipper, but the little
Florence.
     'Oh!  there's a Tartar within a hundred  miles of where  we're  now  in
conversation, I  can tell you, Mrs Richards, present company always excepted
too,' said  Susan  Nipper; 'wish you  good  morning, Mrs Richards,  now Miss
Floy,  you  come along with  me,  and don't go hanging back like  a  naughty
wicked child that judgments is no example to, don't!'
     In spite  of being thus  adjured, and in  spite also of some hauling on
the  part  of Susan  Nipper, tending  towards the dislocation of  her  right
shoulder,   little  Florence  broke   away,  and   kissed  her  new  friend,
affectionately.
     'Oh dear! after  it was  given  out so  'tickerlerly, that Mrs Richards
wasn't to be made free with!' exclaimed Susan. 'Very well, Miss Floy!'
     'God bless the sweet thing!' said Richards, 'Good-bye, dear!'
     'Good-bye!' returned the child. 'God bless you! I shall come to see you
again soon, and you'll come to see me? Susan will let us. Won't you, Susan?'
     Spitfire  seemed to be in the main a good-natured little body, although
a  disciple of that  school  of  trainers of the young idea which holds that
childhood, like money, must be shaken and rattled and jostled about  a  good
deal  to  keep  it bright. For, being thus appealed  to with some  endearing
gestures and  caresses, she  folded  her small arms and shook  her head, and
conveyed a relenting expression into her very-wide-open black eyes.
     'It ain't  right of  you  to ask it,  Miss Floy, for  you know I  can't
refuse you,  but Mrs  Richards and  me  will  see what  can  be done, if Mrs
Richards  likes, I may  wish, you  see,  to  take  a  voyage to  Chaney, Mrs
Richards, but I mayn't know how to leave the London Docks.'
     Richards assented to the proposition.
     'This  house  ain't  so exactly ringing  with  merry-making,' said Miss
Nipper, 'that one need be  lonelier than  one must be.  Your Toxes and  your
Chickses may draw out my two front double teeth, Mrs Richards, but that's no
reason why I need offer 'em the whole set.'
     This proposition was also assented to by Richards, as an obvious one.
     'So  I'm  able, I'm  sure,'said  Susan  Nipper, 'to live  friendly, Mrs
Richards, while  Master  Paul continues a  permanency,  if the means can  be
planned out without going openly  against orders, but goodness gracious Miss
Floy, you haven't got your things  off yet,  you naughty child, you haven't,
come along!'
     With  these words,  Susan Nipper, in a  transport  of  coercion, made a
charge at her young ward, and swept her out of the room.
     The  child, in her  grief and  neglect,  was so gentle,  so  quiet, and
uncomplaining; was possessed of so much affection that no one seemed to care
to have, and so  much  sorrowful intelligence  that no one seemed to mind or
think  about the wounding of, that Polly's heart was  sore when she was left
alone again. In the simple  passage that had taken place between herself and
the motherless  little girl, her own motherly heart had been touched no less
than the child's; and she  felt, as the child did, that there  was something
of confidence and interest between them from that moment.
     Notwithstanding Mr Toodle's great reliance on Polly, she was perhaps in
point of artificial accomplishments very  little his superior. She  had been
good-humouredly working and  drudging  for her life all her life,  and was a
sober steady-going person, with matter-of-fact  ideas  about the butcher and
baker,  and the division of pence into  farthings.  But she was a good plain
sample of a nature that is ever, in the mass, better, truer, higher, nobler,
quicker  to feel, and much more constant to retain, all tenderness and pity,
self-denial and devotion, than the nature of men. And, perhaps, unlearned as
she was,  she could  have brought a dawning knowledge home to  Mr Dombey  at
that early day, which  would  not then  have  struck  him in  the  end  like
lightning.
     But this  is  from  the purpose. Polly  only  thought, at that time, of
improving on  her successful propitiation  of Miss Nipper, and devising some
means of having  little Florence  aide her, lawfully, and without rebellion.
An opening happened to present itself that very night.
     She  had been rung  down into  the glass room as  usual, and had walked
about  and about it a  long  time, with  the baby in her  arms, when, to her
great surprise and dismay, Mr Dombey - whom she had seen at first leaning on
his  elbow at the table, and afterwards walking up and down the middle room,
drawing, each time, a  little nearer, she thought, to the open folding doors
- came out, suddenly, and stopped before her.
     'Good evening, Richards.'
     Just the same austere,  stiff  gentleman, as he  had appeared to her on
that  first  day.  Such a hard-looking  gentleman,  that  she  involuntarily
dropped her eyes and her curtsey at the same time.
     'How is Master Paul, Richards?'
     'Quite thriving, Sir, and well.'
     'He looks so,' said Mr Dombey, glancing with great interest at the tiny
face  she  uncovered  for  his  observation, and  yet affecting to  be  half
careless of it. 'They give you everything you want, I hope?'
     'Oh yes, thank you, Sir.'
     She suddenly  appended  such  an  obvious  hesitation  to  this  reply,
however, that Mr  Dombey,  who  had  turned  away; stopped, and turned round
again, inquiringly.
     'If you please, Sir, the child is very much disposed to  take notice of
things,'  said Richards,  with another curtsey,  'and - upstairs is a little
dull for him, perhaps, Sir.'
     'I  begged  them  to take  you out  for airings, constantly,'  said  Mr
Dombey. 'Very well! You shall go out oftener.  You're quite right to mention
it.'
     'I  beg your pardon, Sir,' faltered Polly,  'but we go out quite plenty
Sir, thank you.'
     'What would you have then?' asked Mr Dombey.
     'Indeed Sir, I don't exactly know,' said Polly, 'unless - '
     'Yes?'
     'I believe nothing is  so good for making children lively and cheerful,
Sir,  as seeing other children playing  about 'em,'  observed  Polly, taking
courage.
     'I  think  I mentioned to you,  Richards, when you came here,'  said Mr
Dombey, with a  frown, 'that I wished you to see as little of your family as
possible.'
     'Oh dear yes, Sir, I wasn't so much as thinking of that.'
     'I am  glad of it,' said Mr Dombey hastily. 'You can continue your walk
if you please.'
     With  that, he  disappeared  into  his  inner  room; and  Polly had the
satisfaction of feeling that he had thoroughly misunderstood her object, and
that  she  had fallen  into  disgrace  without the least advancement  of her
purpose.
     Next  night, she found him walking about the conservatory when she came
down.  As she  stopped at  the door,  checked  by  this unusual  sight,  and
uncertain whether to  advance or retreat, he called her in. His mind was too
much set on  Dombey  and  Son,  it soon  appeared, to  admit  of  his having
forgotten her suggestion.
     'If you  really think  that sort of society is  good for the child,' he
said sharply, as  if  there  had been no  interval  since  she  proposed it,
'where's Miss Florence?'
     'Nothing could  be better than Miss Florence, Sir,' said Polly eagerly,
'but I understood from her maid that they were not to - '
     Mr Dombey rang the bell, and walked till it was answered.
     'Tell  them  always  to  let  Miss Florence be with  Richards when  she
chooses, and go out with her, and so forth. Tell them to let the children be
together, when Richards wishes it.'
     The iron  was now  hot, and Richards striking on it boldly -  it  was a
good  cause and  she bold in it, though instinctively afraid of Mr  Dombey -
requested  that  Miss  Florence might be sent  down then and there,  to make
friends with her little brother.
     She  feigned to be dandling the child as  the  servant  retired on this
errand, but she thought  that she saw  Mr Dombey's colour changed;  that the
expression of his face quite altered; that he turned,  hurriedly, as  if  to
gainsay what he had said, or she had said, or both, and was only deterred by
very shame.
     And she was  right. The last time he had seen his slighted child, there
had been that in the sad embrace between her and her dying mother, which was
at once a revelation and a reproach to him. Let  him be absorbed as he would
in  the Son  on whom he  built such  high  hopes,  he could not  forget that
closing scene. He could not forget  that he had had no part in it.  That, at
the  bottom  of  its  clear  depths  of tenderness and truth' lay those  two
figures clasped in each other's arms, while he stood on the bank above them,
looking down a mere spectator - not a sharer with them - quite shut out.
     Unable to exclude  these things  from his  remembrance, or  to keep his
mind free from such  imperfect shapes of the  meaning  with  which they were
fraught, as were able to make themselves visible to him  through the mist of
his pride, his  previous  feeling of  indifference  towards little  Florence
changed into an uneasiness of  an extraordinary kind. Young as she  was, and
possessing in any  eyes but  his (and perhaps in his too) even more than the
usual amount of childish simplicity and confidence, he almost felt as if she
watched and distrusted him. As if she  held  the clue to something secret in
his breast, of the nature of which he was hardly informed himself. As if she
had an innate knowledge of one jarring and discordant string within him, and
her very breath could sound it.
     His feeling about the  child had  been negative  from her birth. He had
never conceived  an aversion to her: it had  not been worth his  while or in
his humour. She had never been a positively disagreeable object to  him. But
now  he was ill at ease  about  her. She troubled his peace. He  would  have
preferred to put  her idea aside  altogether, if he had known how. Perhaps -
who shall decide on such mysteries!  - he  was afraid that he  might come to
hate her.
     When  little Florence  timidly presented herself, Mr Dombey stopped  in
his pacing  up and down and looked towards her. Had he looked  with  greater
interest and with a father's eye, he might have read in her  keen glance the
impulses  and  fears that  made  her  waver;  the passionate  desire to  run
clinging to him, crying, as she hid her face in his embrace, 'Oh father, try
to love me! there's no one else!' the dread of  a repulse; the fear of being
too bold, and of offending him; the pitiable need in which she stood of some
assurance  and  encouragement;  and  how  her overcharged  young  heart  was
wandering to find some natural resting-place, for its sorrow and affection.
     But he saw nothing of  this.  He saw her pause irresolutely at the door
and look towards him; and he saw no more.
     'Come in,' he said, 'come in: what is the child afraid of?'
     She came in;  and  after  glancing  round  her  for  a  moment  with an
uncertain air,  stood pressing her small hands  hard together, close  within
the door.
     'Come here, Florence,' said her father, coldly. 'Do you know who I am?'
     'Yes, Papa.'
     'Have you nothing to say to me?'
     The tears that  stood in her  eyes as she  raised them  quickly to  his
face, were frozen by the expression it wore.  She looked down again, and put
out her trembling hand.
     Mr  Dombey took it loosely in his own, and stood looking  down upon her
for a moment, as if he knew as little as the child, what to say or do.
     'There! Be  a  good  girl,'  he  said, patting  her  on the  head,  and
regarding her as it were by stealth  with a disturbed and doubtful look. 'Go
to Richards! Go!'
     His little daughter hesitated for another  instant  as though she would
have clung about him still, or had some lingering  hope  that he might raise
her in  his arms and  kiss  her.  She  looked up in his face  once  more. He
thought how  like  her expression was  then,  to  what it had been when  she
looked round at the Doctor - that night - and instinctively dropped her hand
and turned away.
     It  was  not  difficult  to  perceive  that Florence  was  at  a  great
disadvantage in her father's presence. It was not only a constraint upon the
child's mind, but even upon the natural grace and freedom of her actions. As
she  sported and played about her  baby brother  that night, her  manner was
seldom so winning and so pretty as it  naturally  was, and sometimes when in
his pacing to and fro, he  came near her (she had,  perhaps, for the moment,
forgotten   him)  it  changed  upon  the   instant  and  became  forced  and
embarrassed.
     Still, Polly persevered with all the better heart for seeing this; and,
judging of Mr Dombey by herself, had great confidence in the mute  appeal of
poor little Florence's  mourning dress.'  It's hard indeed,' thought  Polly,
'if he takes only to one little motherless child,  when he has another,  and
that a girl, before his eyes.'
     So, Polly kept  her before his  eyes, as long as she could, and managed
so  well with  little Paul,  as to  make it  very plain  that he was all the
livelier  for his sister's company.  When  it was time  to withdraw upstairs
again, she would have sent Florence into the inner room to say good-night to
her father, but the  child was timid and drew back; and when  she  urged her
again, said, spreading her hands before her eyes, as  if to shut out her own
unworthiness, 'Oh no, no! He don't want me. He don't want me!'
     The  little  altercation  between them  had attracted  the notice of Mr
Dombey, who inquired from the table where he was sitting  at his wine,  what
the matter was.
     'Miss Florence was afraid of interrupting, Sir,  if  she came in to say
good-night,' said Richards.
     'It doesn't matter,' returned Mr Dombey. 'You can  let her  come and go
without regarding me.'
     The  child shrunk  as she listened - and was  gone,  before her  humble
friend looked round again.
     However,  Polly   triumphed  not   a  little  in  the  success  of  her
well-intentioned scheme, and in the address with which she had brought it to
bear: whereof she made a  full disclosure to Spitfire when she was once more
safely  entrenched  upstairs.  Miss   Nipper  received  that  proof  of  her
confidence, as  well  as the  prospect  of  their free  association for  the
future,  rather   coldly,   and  was  anything  but  enthusiastic   in   her
demonstrations of joy.
     'I thought you would have been pleased,' said Polly.
     'Oh yes, Mrs Richards,  I'm  very  well pleased,  thank  you,' returned
Susan, who  had suddenly become so  very upright that she seemed to have put
an additional bone in her stays.
     'You don't show it,' said Polly.
     'Oh! Being only a permanency I couldn't  be expected to show it like  a
temporary,'  said Susan Nipper. 'Temporaries carries it all before 'em here,
I find, but though there's a excellent party-wall between this house and the
next, I mayn't exactly like to go to it, Mrs Richards, notwithstanding!'

        CHAPTER 4.
     In  which some  more  First Appearances are made on  the Stage of these
Adventures

     Though the  offices of Dombey and Son  were within the liberties of the
City of London, and within  hearing of Bow Bells, when their clashing voices
were  not drowned by  the uproar in the  streets,  yet were there  hints  of
adventurous and  romantic story  to  be  observed  in some  of  the adjacent
objects. Gog and Magog held their state  within ten minutes' walk; the Royal
Exchange was close at hand; the Bank of England, with its vaults of gold and
silver  'down  among  the  dead  men'  underground,  was  their  magnificent
neighbour. Just round  the corner stood the rich  East  India House, teeming
with suggestions of precious stuffs and  stones, tigers, elephants, howdahs,
hookahs, umbrellas, palm  trees, palanquins, and gorgeous princes of a brown
complexion sitting  on carpets,  with their slippers very much turned up  at
the toes. Anywhere in the immediate vicinity there might be seen pictures of
ships  speeding  away  full  sail  to  all  parts  of the  world; outfitting
warehouses  ready to  pack  off anybody anywhere, fully equipped in  half an
hour;  and  little timber midshipmen  in obsolete  naval uniforms, eternally
employed outside the shop  doors  of  nautical Instrument-makers  in  taking
observations of the hackney carriages.
     Sole master and proprietor of  one  of  these effigies  - of that which
might be called, familiar!y, the woodenest - of that which thrust itself out
above the pavement, right leg foremost, with a  suavity the least endurable,
and  had the shoe buckles  and flapped waistcoat the least reconcileable  to
human   reason,   and  bore   at   its  right  eye  the   most   offensively
disproportionate piece of  machinery - sole  master  and proprietor  of that
Midshipman, and proud of him too, an  elderly gentleman  in  a Welsh wig had
paid  house-rent,  taxes,  rates,  and  dues,  for more  years  than many  a
full-grown  midshipman of  flesh  and blood has  numbered in his  life;  and
midshipmen  who  have attained a pretty green old age, have not been wanting
in the English Navy.
     The  stock-in-trade  of  this  old  gentleman  comprised  chronometers,
barometers, telescopes, compasses, charts,  maps,  sextants, quadrants,  and
specimens  of  every kind of  instrument  used in the  working  of  a ship's
course, or the keeping of a ship's reckoning, or the prosecuting of a ship's
discoveries.  Objects  in  brass and  glass were in  his drawers and  on his
shelves, which  none but the  initiated  could  have found  the top  of,  or
guessed the  use of, or having once examined, could have ever got back again
into their mahogany nests without assistance. Everything was jammed into the
tightest cases, fitted into the narrowest corners, fenced up behind the most
impertinent  cushions, and screwed into  the acutest angles, to  prevent its
philosophical composure from being disturbed by the rolling of the sea. Such
extraordinary precautions were  taken  in every instance  to save  room, and
keep  the  thing  compact; and  so much practical navigation was fitted, and
cushioned, and screwed into every box  (whether the box was a mere  slab, as
some  were,  or  something between a cocked hat  and a star-fish, as  others
were,  and  those quite mild and modest boxes as compared with others); that
the shop itself, partaking of the general infection, seemed almost to become
a snug, sea-going, ship-shape  concern, wanting only good  sea-room,  in the
event of an unexpected launch, to work its way securely to any desert island
in the world.
     Many minor incidents in the household life of the Ships'
     Instrument-maker who  was proud of his little Midshipman,  assisted and
bore out this fancy. His acquaintance lying chiefly among ship-chandlers and
so forth, he had always plenty of the veritable ships' biscuit on his table.
It was  familiar with dried meats  and tongues,  possessing an extraordinary
flavour  of  rope yarn. Pickles  were  produced upon it,  in great wholesale
jars, with 'dealer in all kinds of Ships' Provisions' on  the label; spirits
were set forth in  case bottles  with no throats. Old prints of  ships  with
alphabetical references to  their various mysteries, hung in frames upon the
walls; the Tartar Frigate under weigh, was on the plates; outlandish shells,
seaweeds, and  mosses, decorated  the  chimney-piece; the little wainscotted
back parlour was lighted by a sky-light, like a cabin.
     Here he lived too, in  skipper-like  state, all  alone with his  nephew
Walter:  a  boy of fourteen  who looked  quite enough like a  midshipman, to
carry out the prevailing idea. But there it ended, for Solomon Gills himself
(more generally called old Sol) was far from  having a maritime  appearance.
To say nothing of his Welsh wig, which was as plain and stubborn a Welsh wig
as ever was worn, and in which he looked like anything but a Rover, he was a
slow, quiet-spoken, thoughtful  old fellow, with eyes  as red as if they had
been small suns looking at you through  a fog; and  a newly-awakened manner,
such  as he might have  acquired  by having stared  for three  or  four days
successively through every optical instrument in his shop, and suddenly came
back to the world again, to find it green. The only change ever known in his
outward man,  was from a complete suit of coffee-colour cut very square, and
ornamented with glaring buttons, to the same suit of coffee-colour minus the
inexpressibles, which were then  of  a  pale nankeen. He wore a very precise
shirt-frill, and  carried a pair of first-rate  spectacles on his  forehead,
and a tremendous chronometer in his fob,  rather  than doubt which  precious
possession, he would have believed in a conspiracy against it on part of all
the clocks and watches in the City, and even of the very Sun itself. Such as
he  was,  such  he had  been  in  the  shop  and  parlour  behind the little
Midshipman, for years upon years; going regularly aloft  to bed every  night
in  a  howling  garret remote from the  lodgers,  where, when  gentlemen  of
England  who lived below at ease had little or no idea  of the state  of the
weather, it often blew great guns.
     It is half-past five o'clock, and an  autumn afternoon, when the reader
and Solomon Gills  become acquainted. Solomon  Gills is in the act of seeing
what time it is by the unimpeachable  chronometer. The usual daily clearance
has been making in the City for an hour or more; and the human tide is still
rolling westward. 'The streets have thinned,' as Mr Gills says, 'very much.'
It threatens to be wet to-night. All the  weatherglasses in the shop  are in
low spirits, and  the  rain already shines upon the cocked hat of the wooden
Midshipman.
     'Where's Walter, I wonder!' said Solomon Gills, after he had  carefully
put up the chronometer again. 'Here's dinner  been ready, half  an hour, and
no Walter!'
     Turning round upon  his  stool behind the counter, Mr Gills looked  out
among the instruments in the window, to see if his  nephew might be crossing
the  road. No. He was not among the bobbing umbrellas, and  he certainly was
not the  newspaper  boy in the oilskin cap  who was  slowly working his  way
along the piece of brass outside, writing his name over Mr Gills's name with
his forefinger.
     'If I didn't know he was too fond of me to make a run of it, and go and
enter himself aboard ship against my wishes, I should begin to be fidgetty,'
said Mr  Gills, tapping two or three weather-glasses  with  his knuckles. 'I
really should. All in the Downs, eh! Lots of moisture! Well! it's wanted.'
     I believe,'  said  Mr Gills, blowing the dust  off the  glass  top of a
compass-case, 'that you don't  point more direct and due to the back parlour
than  the boy's  inclination does after  all. And the parlour  couldn't bear
straighter either. Due north. Not the twentieth part of a point either way.'
     'Halloa, Uncle Sol!'
     'Halloa, my boy!' cried  the Instrument-maker, turning  briskly  round.
'What! you are here, are you?'
     A  cheerful looking,  merry boy, fresh with  running  home in the rain;
fair-faced, bright-eyed, and curly-haired.
     'Well, Uncle, how have  you got on without me all day? Is dinner ready?
I'm so hungry.'
     'As  to getting on,' said Solomon good-naturedly, 'it would be odd if I
couldn't get on without a young dog like  you  a great deal better than with
you. As to  dinner being ready, it's been  ready this  half hour and waiting
for you. As to being hungry, I am!'
     'Come along then, Uncle!' cried the boy. 'Hurrah for the admiral!'
     'Confound the admiral!' returned  Solomon Gills.  'You  mean  the  Lord
Mayor.'
     'No I don't!' cried the boy. 'Hurrah for  the  admiral!  Hurrah for the
admiral! For-ward!'
     At this  word  of command,  the  Welsh  wig and  its wearer  were borne
without resistance into the back parlour, as at the head of a boarding party
of five hundred men; and Uncle Sol and his nephew were speedily engaged on a
fried sole with a prospect of steak to follow.
     'The Lord Mayor, Wally,' said Solomon, 'for ever! No more admirals. The
Lord Mayor's your admiral.'
     'Oh,  is he though!'  said the boy, shaking his  head. 'Why, the  Sword
Bearer's better than him. He draws his sword sometimes.
     'And  a pretty  figure  he cuts  with it for his  pains,' returned  the
Uncle. 'Listen to me, Wally, listen to me. Look on the mantelshelf.'
     'Why who  has cocked my silver mug up there, on  a nail?' exclaimed the
boy.
     I have,' said his Uncle. 'No more mugs now.  We must begin to drink out
of glasses to-day, Walter. We are men of business. We belong to the City. We
started in life this morning.
     'Well,  Uncle,' said the boy, 'I'll  drink out of anything you like, so
long as I can drink to you. Here's to you, Uncle Sol, and Hurrah for the
     'Lord Mayor,' interrupted the old man.
     'For  the  Lord Mayor, Sheriffs, Common Council,  and Livery,' said the
boy. 'Long life to 'em!'
     The uncle  nodded his head with great satisfaction. 'And now,' he said,
'let's hear something about the Firm.'
     'Oh! there's not much to be told  about the Firm, Uncle,' said the boy,
plying his knife and fork.' It's a precious  dark set of offices, and in the
room where  I  sit, there's a high fender, and an iron safe, and  some cards
about  ships  that  are going to sail, and  an almanack, and some desks  and
stools,  and an  inkbottle,  and some  books, and some boxes, and a  lot  of
cobwebs, and in one of 'em, just over my head,  a  shrivelled-up blue-bottle
that looks as if it had hung there ever so long.'
     'Nothing else?' said the Uncle.
     'No, nothing  else, except an old birdcage (I wonder how that ever came
there!) and a coal-scuttle.'
     'No bankers' books, or cheque books, or bills, or such tokens of wealth
rolling in from  day to day?' said old Sol, looking wistfully at his  nephew
out of the fog that  always seemed to hang about him, and laying an unctuous
emphasis upon the words.
     'Oh yes, plenty  of that I suppose,'  returned  his  nephew carelessly;
'but all that sort of thing's in  Mr Carker's  room, or Mr Morfin's,  or  MR
Dombey's.'
     'Has Mr Dombey been there to-day?' inquired the Uncle.
     'Oh yes! In and out all day.'
     'He didn't take any notice of you, I suppose?'.
     'Yes he did. He walked  up to my seat, - I wish he wasn't so solemn and
stiff,  Uncle, -  and  said,  "Oh! you are  the son  of Mr Gills  the Ships'
Instrument-maker." "Nephew, Sir," I said. "I said nephew, boy," said he. But
I could take my oath he said son, Uncle.'
     'You're mistaken I daresay. It's no matter.
     'No, it's  no matter,  but he  needn't have been so  sharp, I  thought.
There was no harm in it  though he did say son. Then he told me that you had
spoken to him about  me, and that he had  found me  employment in the  House
accordingly, and that I was expected to be  attentive and punctual, and then
he went away. I thought he didn't seem to like me much.'
     'You  mean, I suppose,' observed the Instrument-maker, 'that you didn't
seem to like him much?'
     'Well, Uncle,' returned the boy, laughing. 'Perhaps so; I never thought
of that.'
     Solomon looked a little graver as  he finished his  dinner, and glanced
from  time to  time at the boy's bright face. When dinner was done, and  the
cloth  was  cleared   away  (the  entertainment  had  been  brought  from  a
neighbouring eating-house), he lighted a candle, and went  down below into a
little cellar, while his nephew, standing on the mouldy staircase, dutifully
held  the  light.  After  a  moment's  groping here and  there, he presently
returned with a very ancient-looking bottle, covered with dust and dirt.
     'Why, Uncle  Sol!'  said  the  boy, 'what are  you  about?  that's  the
wonderful Madeira! - there's only one more bottle!'
     Uncle Sol nodded his head, implying that he knew very well what he  was
about; and having drawn the cork in solemn  silence, filled two  glasses and
set the bottle and a third clean glass on the table.
     'You  shall drink the other  bottle, Wally,' he said, 'when you come to
good fortune; when you are a thriving, respected, happy man; when  the start
in  life  you have made to-day shall have brought  you, as I pray  Heaven it
may! - to a  smooth part of the course you have to run, my child. My love to
you!'
     Some of the fog  that hung about  old  Sol seemed to have got into  his
throat; for he spoke huskily. His  hand shook too, as he clinked  his  glass
against his nephew's. But having once got the wine to his lips, he tossed it
off like a man, and smacked them afterwards.
     'Dear  Uncle,' said the boy,  affecting to make light of  it, while the
tears  stood in his eyes, 'for the honour  you have done me,  et  cetera, et
cetera. I shall now  beg to propose Mr Solomon Gills with  three times three
and  one cheer more. Hurrah! and  you'll return thanks, Uncle, when we drink
the last bottle together; won't you?'
     They  clinked  their glasses  again; and Walter, who was  hoarding  his
wine, took a sip of it, and held the glass up to his eye with as critical an
air as he could possibly assume.
     His Uncle  sat looking at him for some time in silence. When their eyes
at  last met,  he  began at once to pursue  the theme  that had occupied his
thoughts, aloud, as if he had been speaking all the time.
     'You see,  Walter,' he said, 'in truth this  business is merely a habit
with me. I  am so accustomed  to the habit  that  I  could hardly live if  I
relinquished it: but there's nothing doing, nothing doing. When that uniform
was  worn,'  pointing  out  towards  the  little  Midshipman, 'then  indeed,
fortunes were to be made, and were made. But competition,  competition - new
invention,  new  invention - alteration,  alteration - the world's gone past
me. I hardly know where I am myself, much less where my customers are.
     'Never mind 'em, Uncle!'
     'Since  you  came  home  from  weekly  boarding-school at  Peckham, for
instance - and that's ten days,' said Solomon, 'I  don't remember more  than
one person that has come into the shop.'
     'Two, Uncle, don't you recollect? There was the man who came to ask for
change for a sovereign - '
     'That's the one,' said Solomon.
     'Why  Uncle! don't you call the woman anybody, who came to  ask the way
to Mile-End Turnpike?'
     'Oh! it's true,' said Solomon, 'I forgot her. Two persons.'
     'To be sure, they didn't buy anything,' cried the boy.
     'No. They didn't buy anything,' said Solomon, quietly.
     'Nor want anything,' cried the boy.
     'No.  If they  had, they'd gone to another  shop,' said Solomon, in the
same tone.
     'But there were two  of 'em, Uncle,' cried the boy,  as if that were  a
great triumph. 'You said only one.'
     'Well, Wally,'  resumed the  old man,  after  a short pause: 'not being
like the Savages who came on Robinson Crusoe's Island,  we  can't live  on a
man who asks for change for a sovereign, and a woman who inquires the way to
Mile-End Turnpike. As I said just now, the world has gone  past me.  I don't
blame it; but I no longer understand it. Tradesmen are not the same  as they
used to be, apprentices are not the same, business is not the same, business
commodities are not the same. Seven-eighths of my stock is  old-fashioned. I
am  an old-fashioned  man in an old-fashioned shop, in a  street that is not
the same as I remember it. I have fallen behind the time, and  am too old to
catch it again. Even the noise it makes a long way ahead, confuses me.'
     Walter was going to speak, but his Uncle held up his hand.
     'Therefore, Wally -  therefore  it is that I  am anxious you should  be
early in the busy world,  and on the world's track.  I am only the ghost  of
this  business -  its substance vanished long ago; and when I die, its ghost
will be  laid. As it  is clearly no inheritance for you then, I have thought
it  best to  use for your  advantage,  almost the only  fragment of the  old
connexion that  stands by me, through  long habit. Some people suppose me to
be wealthy. I  wish for  your sake they  were  right.  But whatever  I leave
behind me, or whatever I can give you, you in  such a  House as Dombey's are
in  the road to use well  and make the most of. Be diligent, try to like it,
my dear boy, work for a steady independence, and be happy!'
     'I'll do everything I can, Uncle, to  deserve your affection. Indeed  I
will,' said the boy, earnestly
     'I know it,' said Solomon. 'I am sure of it,' and he applied himself to
a second glass  of the old Madeira,  with increased relish. 'As to the Sea,'
he pursued, 'that's  well enough in fiction, Wally, but it won't do in fact:
it  won't  do at  all.  It's natural enough that you  should think about it,
associating it with  all these familiar things; but  it  won't do, it  won't
do.'
     Solomon Gills rubbed his hands with an air of stealthy enjoyment, as he
talked  of the sea, though; and looked  on the  seafaring objects  about him
with inexpressible complacency.
     'Think of this wine for instance,' said old Sol, 'which has been to the
East Indies and back, I'm not able to say how often, and has been once round
the world.  Think of the  pitch-dark nights, the roaring winds, and  rolling
seas:'
     'The thunder, lightning, rain, hail, storm of all kinds,' said the boy.
     'To be sure,' said Solomon, - 'that this wine has passed through. Think
what  a straining and  creaking of  timbers and  masts: what a whistling and
howling of the gale through ropes and rigging:'
     'What a clambering  aloft  of men, vying with each other who shall  lie
out first upon the yards to  furl the  icy sails, while the  ship  rolls and
pitches, like mad!' cried his nephew.
     'Exactly so,'  said Solomon: 'has gone on, over the old cask  that held
this wine. Why, when the Charming Sally went down in the - '
     'In the Baltic Sea, in the dead of night; five-and-twenty  minutes past
twelve when the captain's watch stopped in his pocket; he lying dead against
the main-mast - on the fourteenth of February, seventeen forty-nine!'  cried
Walter, with great animation.
     'Ay, to be sure!' cried  old Sol, 'quite right!  Then, there  were five
hundred casks of such  wine  aboard; and  all hands (except  the first mate,
first lieutenant,  two seamen, and a lady, in a leaky boat) going to work to
stave  the casks, got  drunk and died drunk, singing "Rule  Britannia", when
she settled and went down, and ending with one awful scream in chorus.'
     'But  when the George the Second drove ashore,  Uncle, on the  coast of
Cornwall, in a dismal  gale, two  hours  before daybreak,  on the  fourth of
March, 'seventy-one,  she had near two hundred horses aboard; and the horses
breaking loose down  below,  early in the  gale, and tearing to and fro, and
trampling  each  other  to  death, made such noises, and  set up such  human
cries, that the crew believing  the ship to  be full of devils,  some of the
best  men,  losing heart  and head, went overboard in despair,  and only two
were left alive, at last, to tell the tale.'
     'And when,' said old Sol, 'when the Polyphemus - '
     'Private  West  India  Trader,  burden  three  hundred  and fifty tons,
Captain, John Brown of Deptford. Owners, Wiggs and Co.,' cried Walter.
     'The  same,' said Sol; 'when she took fire, four days' sail with a fair
wind out of Jamaica Harbour, in the night - '
     'There were  two brothers  on board,'  interposed his  nephew, speaking
very fast and loud, 'and there not being room  for  both of them in the only
boat that wasn't swamped,  neither of  them would consent  to  go, until the
elder took the younger by the waist, and flung him in. And then the younger,
rising in the boat, cried out, "Dear Edward, think of  your promised wife at
home. I'm only a boy. No one waits at home for me. Leap down into my place!"
and flung himself in the sea!'
     The kindling eye and heightened colour of  the boy, who had risen  from
his seat in the earnestness of what he  said and felt,  seemed to remind old
Sol of something he had forgotten, or that his encircling mist  had hitherto
shut out. Instead of proceeding with any more anecdotes, as he had evidently
intended  but a moment before, he gave a short dry  cough, and  said, 'Well!
suppose we change the subject.'
     The  truth was, that the simple-minded Uncle  in his secret  attraction
towards the marvellous and  adventurous - of which  he was, in  some sort, a
distant relation, by his trade - had greatly encouraged the same  attraction
in the nephew; and that everything that had ever been put  before the boy to
deter him  from a life of adventure, had had the usual unaccountable  effect
of  sharpening his taste  for  it. This is invariable.  It would  seem as if
there never was a book written, or  a story told, expressly  with the object
of keeping boys on shore, which did not lure and charm them to the ocean, as
a matter of course.
     But an addition  to the little  party  now made its  appearance, in the
shape of a gentleman in a  wide suit  of blue, with a hook instead of a hand
attached to his right wrist; very bushy black eyebrows; and a thick stick in
his left hand, covered all over (like his nose) with knobs.  He wore a loose
black silk handkerchief round his neck, and such a very  large  coarse shirt
collar,  that it looked like a small sail. He  was  evidently the person for
whom the spare wine-glass  was intended,  and evidently knew it;  for having
taken off  his rough outer coat, and hung up, on a particular peg behind the
door, such a  hard glazed hat as  a sympathetic person's head might ache  at
the sight of, and which left a  red rim round his own forehead  as if he had
been wearing a tight basin, he brought a chair to where the clean glass was,
and sat  himself down behind it. He was  usually  addressed as Captain, this
visitor; and had been  a pilot, or  a skipper,  or  a  privateersman, or all
three perhaps; and was a very salt-looking man indeed.
     His face, remarkable for a brown solidity, brightened as he shook hands
with Uncle and  nephew; but he  seemed to be of  a laconic  disposition, and
merely said: