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

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

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

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

     Beneath the watching and attentive  eyes of Time - so far another Major
- Paul's slumbers gradually changed. More and more light broke in upon them;
distincter  and  distincter dreams  disturbed them; an accumulating crowd of
objects  and  impressions  swarmed  about  his  rest; and so he  passed from
babyhood to childhood, and became a talking, walking, wondering Dombey.
     On the  downfall and banishment of Richards, the nursery may be said to
have been put into commission:  as a Public Department is sometimes, when no
individual Atlas can  be  found to  support it The  Commissioners  were,  of
course, Mrs Chick and Miss  Tox: who devoted themselves to their duties with
such astonishing ardour that Major Bagstock had  every day some new reminder
of  his being forsaken, while Mr Chick, bereft of domestic supervision, cast
himself upon the gay world, dined at clubs and coffee-houses, smelt of smoke
on  three different  occasions, went  to the play by  himself, and in short,
loosened  (as  Mrs  Chick  once told  him)  every  social  bond,  and  moral
obligation.
     Yet,  in spite of  his early promise, all this vigilance and care could
not  make little Paul a  thriving boy. Naturally delicate, perhaps, he pined
and wasted  after the dismissal of his  nurse, and,  for a long time, seemed
but to wait  his opportunity of gliding through their hands, and seeking his
lost mother.  This dangerous  ground  in his  steeple-chase towards  manhood
passed, he still found it very rough riding, and was grievously beset by all
the obstacles in his course.  Every tooth was a  break-neck fence, and every
pimple in the measles a stone wall to him. He  was down in every  fit of the
hooping-cough, and  rolled upon and  crushed  by  a  whole  field  of  small
diseases, that came trooping on each other's heels to prevent his getting up
again. Some bird of prey got  into his throat instead of the thrush; and the
very chickens  turning ferocious - if they have  anything  to do  with  that
infant malady to which they lend their name - worried him like tiger-cats.
     The  chill  of Paul's christening  had  struck  home, perhaps  to  some
sensitive part of his  nature, which could not  recover  itself  in the cold
shade  of  his father; but he was an  unfortunate child from that  day.  Mrs
Wickam often said she never see a dear so put upon.
     Mrs Wickam was a waiter's wife  - which  would seem equivalent to being
any other man's widow - whose application for an  engagement in  Mr Dombey's
service  had  been  favourably   considered,  on  account  of  the  apparent
impossibility of her  having any  followers, or anyone to follow;  and  who,
from within a day or two of  Paul's sharp weaning, had  been engaged as  his
nurse.  Mrs Wickam was a meek woman, of a fair complexion, with her eyebrows
always elevated, and her head  always drooping; who was always ready to pity
herself, or to be pitied, or to pity anybody  else; and who had a surprising
natural gift of  viewing all subjects in  an utterly  forlorn  and  pitiable
light, and bringing dreadful precedents to bear upon them, and  deriving the
greatest consolation from the exercise of that talent.
     It  is  hardly necessary to observe, that no touch of this quality ever
reached  the  magnificent  knowledge  of  Mr  Dombey.  It  would  have  been
remarkable,  indeed, if any had;  when no one in  the house  -  not even Mrs
Chick  or Miss Tox -  dared  ever whisper to him that  there had, on any one
occasion, been the least  reason for uneasiness in reference to little Paul.
He had settled, within himself, that the child must necessarily pass through
a certain routine  of  minor maladies, and  that the sooner  he  did so  the
better. If he could have bought him off, or provided a substitute, as in the
case of an unlucky drawing  for the  militia, he would  have been glad to do
so, on  liberal terms. But as this was not feasible,  he merely wondered, in
his haughty-manner,  now and then, what  Nature meant by it;  and  comforted
himself with the reflection that there was another milestone passed upon the
road, and that the  great end of the journey lay so much the nearer. For the
feeling  uppermost  in  his  mind,  now  and  constantly  intensifying,  and
increasing in it as Paul grew older, was impatience. Impatience for the time
to come, when  his visions of their united consequence and grandeur would be
triumphantly realized.
     Some philosophers tell us that  selfishness  is at the root of our best
loves and affections.' Mr Dombey's young child was,  from the beginning,  so
distinctly important to him as a part of his own greatness, or (which is the
same thing) of the greatness of Dombey and Son, that there  is no doubt  his
parental  affection might  have  been  easily  traced, like  many  a  goodly
superstructure of fair fame, to a  very low foundation. But he loved his son
with  all the love  he had. If there were a warm place  in his frosty heart,
his son occupied it; if its  very hard surface could  receive the impression
of any  image, the image of  that  son was there;  though  not so much as an
infant, or as a boy,  but as a grown man -  the 'Son' of the Firm. Therefore
he was  impatient  to  advance  into  the  future, and  to  hurry  over  the
intervening passages of his history. Therefore he had  little or no anxiety'
about them, in spite of his love;  feeling as if the boy had a charmed life,
and must become the man with whom he held such constant communication in his
thoughts, and for whom he planned and projected, as for an existing reality,
every day.
     Thus  Paul  grew to be nearly  five years  old. He was  a pretty little
fellow; though there was something  wan and wistful in  his small face, that
gave  occasion to many  significant shakes of  Mrs  Wickam's head, and  many
long-drawn inspirations  of Mrs  Wickam's breath.  His temper gave  abundant
promise  of  being  imperious  in after-life;  and  he  had  as  hopeful  an
apprehension  of  his own  importance, and the rightful subservience of  all
other things and persons to it,  as heart  could desire. He was childish and
sportive enough  at  times, and not of a sullen disposition;  but  he had  a
strange, old-fashioned, thoughtful way, at  other times, of sitting brooding
in  his miniature  arm-chair, when he looked (and talked)  like one of those
terrible  little Beings in the  Fairy tales, who, at a hundred  and fifty or
two hundred years of age, fantastically represent the children for whom they
have been substituted. He would frequently  be stricken with this precocious
mood  upstairs in the  nursery; and would sometimes lapse  into it suddenly,
exclaiming that he was tired:  even while  playing with Florence, or driving
Miss Tox in single harness. But at no time did he fall into it so surely, as
when,  his little chair being  carried down  into his father's  room, he sat
there with him  after dinner, by the fire. They wer