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 wife 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 he 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.

Miss Tox has had a long friendship with Major Joe Bagstock, who lives near her, but as she spends more time at the Dombey house she becomes cold to him. It becomes clear that she is hoping to win the heart of Mr. Dombey and become his second wife

This section of the novel explores the complex and often ambivalent feelings that those around Dombey have for him. While Dombey is often an unsympathetic character, readers may be struck by the fact that he has relatively few people in his life whom he can trust, and who sincerely respect him. While Dombey responds well to Bagstock's flattery, he is innocently unaware that Bagstock set out with ulterior motives. Dombey's inability to distinguish sincere affection, such as that shown by Florence or Miss Tox, from the flattery and manipulation of characters like Mrs. Chick and Bagstock, will prove to be part of his downfall. At the same time, however, this section also reveals Dombey as a greedy and calculating man, and someone whose consciousness of rank and social position blinds him to the true value of individuals. He should be deeply grateful to Walter for having protected his daughter, and yet he sees in him instead an uncomfortable reminder of a world he did not want his children to encounter. As a result, and also in an ill-advised attempt to shape Paul's character, Dombey insists on humiliating Walter by making him painfully aware of the divide between himself and the Dombey family. Dombey makes a number of attempts to pass values along to his son in this section. In addition to trying to evoke the vast importance of money to him by explaining that money can do anything, he also puts the decision about whether to lend money to Walter in Paul's hands. In both cases, Paul, who represents a somewhat idealized child character in his precocious wisdom and innate goodness, shows greater understanding and compassion than his adult father does. The novel repeatedly suggests that characters who are either young, or somewhat simplistic and innocence in their views of the world, such as Toots and Cuttle, have the ability to show genuine goodness, while more crafty characters such as Bagstock and Carker end up using their intelligence to self-serving ends. As an extension of the contrast between the perspectives of children and adults, this section shows a number of institutions, such as Mrs. Pipchin's home and the Blimber school that claim to support the welfare of children, but fail at actually doing so. Dickens had several traumatic experiences with educational institutions in his youth and is often bitingly critical of Victorian systems of education and training. While in contrast to the Pipchin boarding house, the Blimber School does foster a sense of community and is ultimately animated by good intentions, it does not promote any active critical or intellectual engagement. Nor, in a rapidly changing world, does there seem to be much concern with giving the boys useful skills and knowledge; rather, just as the focus is on "dead languages," the curriculum is outdated and therefore even less meaningful to the pupils.


Beneath the watching and attentive eyes of Time--so far another
Major--Paul's slumbers gradually changed. More and more light broke
in upon them; distincter and distincter dreams disturbed them; an
accumulating crowd of objects and impressions swarmed about his rest;
and so he passed from babyhood to childhood, and became a talking,
walking, wondering Dombey.

On the downfall and banishment of Richards, the nursery may be said to
have been put into commission: as a Public Department is sometimes, when
no individual Atlas can be found to support it The Commissioners were,
of course, Mrs Chick and Miss Tox: who devoted themselves to their
duties with such astonishing ardour that Major Bagstock had every day
some new reminder of his being forsaken, while Mr Chick, bereft of
domestic supervision, cast himself upon the gay world, dined at clubs
and coffee-houses, smelt of smoke on three different occasions, went to
the play by himself, and in short, loosened (as Mrs Chick once told him)
every social bond, and moral obligation.

Yet, in spite of his early promise, all this vigilance and care could
not make little Paul a thriving boy. Naturally delicate, perhaps, he
pined and wasted after the dismissal of his nurse, and, for a long time,
seemed but to wait his opportunity of gliding through their hands, and
seeking his lost mother. This dangerous ground in his steeple-chase
towards manhood passed, he still found it very rough riding, and was
grievously beset by all the obstacles in his course. Every tooth was a
break-neck fence, and every pimple in the measles a stone wall to him.
He was down in every fit of the hooping-cough, and rolled upon and
crushed by a whole field of small diseases, that came trooping on each
other's heels to prevent his getting up again. Some bird of prey got
into his throat instead of the thrush; and the very chickens turning
ferocious--if they have anything to do with that infant malady to which
they lend their name--worried him like tiger-cats.

The chill of Paul's christening had struck home, perhaps to some
sensitive part of his nature, which could not recover itself in the cold
shade of his father; but he was an unfortunate child from that day. Mrs
Wickam often said she never see a dear so put upon.

Mrs Wickam was a waiter's wife--which would seem equivalent to being any
other man's widow--whose application for an engagement in Mr Dombey's
service had been favourably considered, on account of the apparent
impossibility of her having any followers, or anyone to follow; and who,
from within a day or two of Paul's sharp weaning, had been engaged as
his nurse. Mrs Wickam was a meek woman, of a fair complexion, with her
eyebrows always elevated, and her head always drooping; who was always
ready to pity herself, or to be pitied, or to pity anybody else; and
who had a surprising natural gift of viewing all subjects in an utterly
forlorn and pitiable light, and bringing dreadful precedents to bear
upon them, and deriving the greatest consolation from the exercise of
that talent.

It is hardly necessary to observe, that no touch of this quality ever
reached the magnificent knowledge of Mr Dombey. It would have been
remarkable, indeed, if any had; when no one in the house--not even Mrs
Chick or Miss Tox--dared ever whisper to him that there had, on any one
occasion, been the least reason for uneasiness in reference to little
Paul. He had settled, within himself, that the child must necessarily
pass through a certain routine of minor maladies, and that the sooner
he did so the better. If he could have bought him off, or provided a
substitute, as in the case of an unlucky drawing for the militia, he
would have been glad to do so, on liberal terms. But as this was not
feasible, he merely wondered, in his haughty manner, now and then, what
Nature meant by it; and comforted himself with the reflection that there
was another milestone passed upon the road, and that the great end of
the journey lay so much the nearer. For the feeling uppermost in his
mind, now and constantly intensifying, and increasing in it as Paul grew
older, was impatience. Impatience for the time to come, when his visions
of their united consequence and grandeur would be triumphantly realized.

Some philosophers tell us that selfishness is at the root of our best
loves and affections. Mr Dombey's young child was, from the beginning,
so distinctly important to him as a part of his own greatness, or (which
is the same thing) of the greatness of Dombey and Son, that there is no
doubt his parental affection might have been easily traced, like many
a goodly superstructure of fair fame, to a very low foundation. But he
loved his son with all the love he had. If there were a warm place in
his frosty heart, his son occupied it; if its very hard surface could
receive the impression of any image, the image of that son was there;
though not so much as an infant, or as a boy, but as a grown man--the
'Son' of the Firm. Therefore he was impatient to advance into the
future, and to hurry over the intervening passages of his history.
Therefore he had little or no anxiety about them, in spite of his love;
feeling as if the boy had a charmed life, and must become the man with
whom he held such constant communication in his thoughts, and for whom
he planned and projected, as for an existing reality, every day.

Thus Paul grew to be nearly five years old. He was a pretty little
fellow; though there was something wan and wistful in his small face,
that gave occasion to many significant shakes of Mrs Wickam's head, and
many long-drawn inspirations of Mrs Wickam's breath. His temper gave
abundant promise of being imperious in after-life; and he had as hopeful
an apprehension of his own importance, and the rightful subservience
of all other things and persons to it, as heart could desire. He was
childish and sportive enough at times, and not of a sullen disposition;
but he had a strange, old-fashioned, thoughtful way, at other times, of
sitting brooding in his miniature arm-chair, when he looked (and talked)
like one of those terrible little Beings in the Fairy tales, who, at a
hundred and fifty or two hundred years of age, fantastically represent
the children for whom they have been substituted. He would frequently
be stricken with this precocious mood upstairs in the nursery; and would
sometimes lapse into it suddenly, exclaiming that he was tired: even
while playing with Florence, or driving Miss Tox in single harness.
But at no time did he fall into it so surely, as when, his little chair
being carried down into his father's room, he sat there with him after
dinner, by the fire. They were the strangest pair at such a time that
ever firelight shone upon. Mr Dombey so erect and solemn, gazing at the
blare; his little image, with an old, old face, peering into the red
perspective with the fixed and rapt attention of a sage. Mr Dombey
entertaining complicated worldly schemes and plans; the little image
entertaining Heaven knows what wild fancies, half-formed thoughts, and
wandering speculations. Mr Dombey stiff with starch and arrogance; the
little image by inheritance, and in unconscious imitation. The two so
very much alike, and yet so monstrously contrasted.

On one of these occasions, when they had both been perfectly quiet for
a long time, and Mr Dombey only knew that the child was awake by
occasionally glancing at his eye, where the bright fire was sparkling
like a jewel, little Paul broke silence thus:

'Papa! what's money?'

The abrupt question had such immediate reference to the subject of Mr
Dombey's thoughts, that Mr Dombey was quite disconcerted.

'What is money, Paul?' he answered. 'Money?'

'Yes,' said the child, laying his hands upon the elbows of his little
chair, and turning the old face up towards Mr Dombey's; 'what is money?'

Mr Dombey was in a difficulty. He would have liked to give him
some explanation involving the terms circulating-medium, currency,
depreciation of currency, paper, bullion, rates of exchange, value of
precious metals in the market, and so forth; but looking down at the
little chair, and seeing what a long way down it was, he answered:
'Gold, and silver, and copper. Guineas, shillings, half-pence. You know
what they are?'

'Oh yes, I know what they are,' said Paul. 'I don't mean that, Papa. I
mean what's money after all?'

Heaven and Earth, how old his face was as he turned it up again towards
his father's!

'What is money after all!' said Mr Dombey, backing his chair a little,
that he might the better gaze in sheer amazement at the presumptuous
atom that propounded such an inquiry.

'I mean, Papa, what can it do?' returned Paul, folding his arms (they
were hardly long enough to fold), and looking at the fire, and up at
him, and at the fire, and up at him again.

Mr Dombey drew his chair back to its former place, and patted him on the
head. 'You'll know better by-and-by, my man,' he said. 'Money, Paul,
can do anything.' He took hold of the little hand, and beat it softly
against one of his own, as he said so.

But Paul got his hand free as soon as he could; and rubbing it gently to
and fro on the elbow of his chair, as if his wit were in the palm, and
he were sharpening it--and looking at the fire again, as though the fire
had been his adviser and prompter--repeated, after a short pause:

'Anything, Papa?'

'Yes. Anything--almost,' said Mr Dombey.

'Anything means everything, don't it, Papa?' asked his son: not
observing, or possibly not understanding, the qualification.

'It includes it: yes,' said Mr Dombey.

'Why didn't money save me my Mama?' returned the child. 'It isn't cruel,
is it?'

'Cruel!' said Mr Dombey, settling his neckcloth, and seeming to resent
the idea. 'No. A good thing can't be cruel.'

'If it's a good thing, and can do anything,' said the little fellow,
thoughtfully, as he looked back at the fire, 'I wonder why it didn't
save me my Mama.'

He didn't ask the question of his father this time. Perhaps he had
seen, with a child's quickness, that it had already made his father
uncomfortable. But he repeated the thought aloud, as if it were quite
an old one to him, and had troubled him very much; and sat with his chin
resting on his hand, still cogitating and looking for an explanation in
the fire.

Mr Dombey having recovered from his surprise, not to say his alarm (for
it was the very first occasion on which the child had ever broached the
subject of his mother to him, though he had had him sitting by his side,
in this same manner, evening after evening), expounded to him how
that money, though a very potent spirit, never to be disparaged on any
account whatever, could not keep people alive whose time was come to
die; and how that we must all die, unfortunately, even in the City,
though we were never so rich. But how that money caused us to be
honoured, feared, respected, courted, and admired, and made us powerful
and glorious in the eyes of all men; and how that it could, very often,
even keep off death, for a long time together. How, for example, it had
secured to his Mama the services of Mr Pilkins, by which he, Paul, had
often profited himself; likewise of the great Doctor Parker Peps, whom
he had never known. And how it could do all, that could be done. This,
with more to the same purpose, Mr Dombey instilled into the mind of his
son, who listened attentively, and seemed to understand the greater part
of what was said to him.

'It can't make me strong and quite well, either, Papa; can it?' asked
Paul, after a short silence; rubbing his tiny hands.

'Why, you are strong and quite well,' returned Mr Dombey. 'Are you not?'

Oh! the age of the face that was turned up again, with an expression,
half of melancholy, half of slyness, on it!

'You are as strong and well as such little people usually are? Eh?' said
Mr Dombey.

'Florence is older than I am, but I'm not as strong and well as
Florence, 'I know,' returned the child; 'and I believe that when
Florence was as little as me, she could play a great deal longer at a
time without tiring herself. I am so tired sometimes,' said little Paul,
warming his hands, and looking in between the bars of the grate, as if
some ghostly puppet-show were performing there, 'and my bones ache so
(Wickam says it's my bones), that I don't know what to do.'

'Ay! But that's at night,' said Mr Dombey, drawing his own chair closer
to his son's, and laying his hand gently on his back; 'little people
should be tired at night, for then they sleep well.'

'Oh, it's not at night, Papa,' returned the child, 'it's in the day;
and I lie down in Florence's lap, and she sings to me. At night I dream
about such cu-ri-ous things!'

And he went on, warming his hands again, and thinking about them, like
an old man or a young goblin.

Mr Dombey was so astonished, and so uncomfortable, and so perfectly at
a loss how to pursue the conversation, that he could only sit looking at
his son by the light of the fire, with his hand resting on his back, as
if it were detained there by some magnetic attraction. Once he advanced
his other hand, and turned the contemplative face towards his own for
a moment. But it sought the fire again as soon as he released it;
and remained, addressed towards the flickering blaze, until the nurse
appeared, to summon him to bed.

'I want Florence to come for me,' said Paul.

'Won't you come with your poor Nurse Wickam, Master Paul?' inquired that
attendant, with great pathos.

'No, I won't,' replied Paul, composing himself in his arm-chair again,
like the master of the house.

Invoking a blessing upon his innocence, Mrs Wickam withdrew, and
presently Florence appeared in her stead. The child immediately started
up with sudden readiness and animation, and raised towards his father in
bidding him good-night, a countenance so much brighter, so much younger,
and so much more child-like altogether, that Mr Dombey, while he felt
greatly reassured by the change, was quite amazed at it.

After they had left the room together, he thought he heard a soft voice
singing; and remembering that Paul had said his sister sung to him, he
had the curiosity to open the door and listen, and look after them. She
was toiling up the great, wide, vacant staircase, with him in her arms;
his head was lying on her shoulder, one of his arms thrown negligently
round her neck. So they went, toiling up; she singing all the way, and
Paul sometimes crooning out a feeble accompaniment. Mr Dombey looked
after them until they reached the top of the staircase--not without
halting to rest by the way--and passed out of his sight; and then he
still stood gazing upwards, until the dull rays of the moon, glimmering
in a melancholy manner through the dim skylight, sent him back to his
room.

Mrs Chick and Miss Tox were convoked in council at dinner next day;
and when the cloth was removed, Mr Dombey opened the proceedings by
requiring to be informed, without any gloss or reservation, whether
there was anything the matter with Paul, and what Mr Pilkins said about
him.

'For the child is hardly,' said Mr Dombey, 'as stout as I could wish.'

'My dear Paul,' returned Mrs Chick, 'with your usual happy
discrimination, which I am weak enough to envy you, every time I am in
your company; and so I think is Miss Tox.'

'Oh my dear!' said Miss Tox, softly, 'how could it be otherwise?
Presumptuous as it is to aspire to such a level; still, if the bird of
night may--but I'll not trouble Mr Dombey with the sentiment. It merely
relates to the Bulbul.'

Mr Dombey bent his head in stately recognition of the Bulbuls as an
old-established body.

'With your usual happy discrimination, my dear Paul,' resumed Mrs Chick,
'you have hit the point at once. Our darling is altogether as stout as
we could wish. The fact is, that his mind is too much for him. His soul
is a great deal too large for his frame. I am sure the way in which
that dear child talks!' said Mrs Chick, shaking her head; 'no one would
believe. His expressions, Lucretia, only yesterday upon the subject of
Funerals!'

'I am afraid,' said Mr Dombey, interrupting her testily, 'that some of
those persons upstairs suggest improper subjects to the child. He was
speaking to me last night about his--about his Bones,' said Mr Dombey,
laying an irritated stress upon the word. 'What on earth has anybody to
do with the--with the--Bones of my son? He is not a living skeleton, I
suppose.'

'Very far from it,' said Mrs Chick, with unspeakable expression.

'I hope so,' returned her brother. 'Funerals again! who talks to the
child of funerals? We are not undertakers, or mutes, or grave-diggers, I
believe.'

'Very far from it,' interposed Mrs Chick, with the same profound
expression as before.

'Then who puts such things into his head?' said Mr Dombey. 'Really I
was quite dismayed and shocked last night. Who puts such things into his
head, Louisa?'

'My dear Paul,' said Mrs Chick, after a moment's silence, 'it is of no
use inquiring. I do not think, I will tell you candidly that Wickam is a
person of very cheerful spirit, or what one would call a--'

'A daughter of Momus,' Miss Tox softly suggested.

'Exactly so,' said Mrs Chick; 'but she is exceedingly attentive and
useful, and not at all presumptuous; indeed I never saw a more biddable
woman. I would say that for her, if I was put upon my trial before a
Court of Justice.'

'Well! you are not put upon your trial before a Court of Justice, at
present, Louisa,' returned Mr Dombey, chafing, 'and therefore it don't
matter.'

'My dear Paul,' said Mrs Chick, in a warning voice, 'I must be spoken
to kindly, or there is an end of me,' at the same time a premonitory
redness developed itself in Mrs Chick's eyelids which was an invariable
sign of rain, unless the weather changed directly.

'I was inquiring, Louisa,' observed Mr Dombey, in an altered voice, and
after a decent interval, 'about Paul's health and actual state.'

'If the dear child,' said Mrs Chick, in the tone of one who was summing
up what had been previously quite agreed upon, instead of saying it all
for the first time, 'is a little weakened by that last attack, and is
not in quite such vigorous health as we could wish; and if he has some
temporary weakness in his system, and does occasionally seem about to
lose, for the moment, the use of his--'

Mrs Chick was afraid to say limbs, after Mr Dombey's recent objection to
bones, and therefore waited for a suggestion from Miss Tox, who, true to
her office, hazarded 'members.'

'Members!' repeated Mr Dombey.

'I think the medical gentleman mentioned legs this morning, my dear
Louisa, did he not?' said Miss Tox.

'Why, of course he did, my love,' retorted Mrs Chick, mildly
reproachful. 'How can you ask me? You heard him. I say, if our dear Paul
should lose, for the moment, the use of his legs, these are casualties
common to many children at his time of life, and not to be prevented
by any care or caution. The sooner you understand that, Paul, and admit
that, the better. If you have any doubt as to the amount of care, and
caution, and affection, and self-sacrifice, that has been bestowed
upon little Paul, I should wish to refer the question to your medical
attendant, or to any of your dependants in this house. Call Towlinson,'
said Mrs Chick, 'I believe he has no prejudice in our favour; quite the
contrary. I should wish to hear what accusation Towlinson can make!'

'Surely you must know, Louisa,' observed Mr Dombey, 'that I don't
question your natural devotion to, and regard for, the future head of my
house.'

'I am glad to hear it, Paul,' said Mrs Chick; 'but really you are very
odd, and sometimes talk very strangely, though without meaning it, I
know. If your dear boy's soul is too much for his body, Paul, you should
remember whose fault that is--who he takes after, I mean--and make the
best of it. He's as like his Papa as he can be. People have noticed it
in the streets. The very beadle, I am informed, observed it, so long ago
as at his christening. He's a very respectable man, with children of his
own. He ought to know.'

'Mr Pilkins saw Paul this morning, I believe?' said Mr Dombey.

'Yes, he did,' returned his sister. 'Miss Tox and myself were present.
Miss Tox and myself are always present. We make a point of it. Mr
Pilkins has seen him for some days past, and a very clever man I believe
him to be. He says it is nothing to speak of; which I can confirm,
if that is any consolation; but he recommended, to-day, sea-air. Very
wisely, Paul, I feel convinced.'

'Sea-air,' repeated Mr Dombey, looking at his sister.

'There is nothing to be made uneasy by, in that,' said Mrs Chick. 'My
George and Frederick were both ordered sea-air, when they were about his
age; and I have been ordered it myself a great many times. I quite
agree with you, Paul, that perhaps topics may be incautiously mentioned
upstairs before him, which it would be as well for his little mind not
to expatiate upon; but I really don't see how that is to be helped, in
the case of a child of his quickness. If he were a common child, there
would be nothing in it. I must say I think, with Miss Tox, that a short
absence from this house, the air of Brighton, and the bodily and mental
training of so judicious a person as Mrs Pipchin for instance--'

'Who is Mrs Pipchin, Louisa?' asked Mr Dombey; aghast at this familiar
introduction of a name he had never heard before.

'Mrs Pipchin, my dear Paul,' returned his sister, 'is an elderly
lady--Miss Tox knows her whole history--who has for some time devoted
all the energies of her mind, with the greatest success, to the study
and treatment of infancy, and who has been extremely well connected. Her
husband broke his heart in--how did you say her husband broke his heart,
my dear? I forget the precise circumstances.

'In pumping water out of the Peruvian Mines,' replied Miss Tox.

'Not being a Pumper himself, of course,' said Mrs Chick, glancing at her
brother; and it really did seem necessary to offer the explanation, for
Miss Tox had spoken of him as if he had died at the handle; 'but having
invested money in the speculation, which failed. I believe that Mrs
Pipchin's management of children is quite astonishing. I have heard it
commended in private circles ever since I was--dear me--how high!' Mrs
Chick's eye wandered about the bookcase near the bust of Mr Pitt, which
was about ten feet from the ground.

'Perhaps I should say of Mrs Pipchin, my dear Sir,' observed Miss Tox,
with an ingenuous blush, 'having been so pointedly referred to, that
the encomium which has been passed upon her by your sweet sister is
well merited. Many ladies and gentleman, now grown up to be interesting
members of society, have been indebted to her care. The humble
individual who addresses you was once under her charge. I believe
juvenile nobility itself is no stranger to her establishment.'

'Do I understand that this respectable matron keeps an establishment,
Miss Tox?' the Mr Dombey, condescendingly.

'Why, I really don't know,' rejoined that lady, 'whether I am justified
in calling it so. It is not a Preparatory School by any means. Should
I express my meaning,' said Miss Tox, with peculiar sweetness, 'if I
designated it an infantine Boarding-House of a very select description?'

'On an exceedingly limited and particular scale,' suggested Mrs Chick,
with a glance at her brother.

'Oh! Exclusion itself!' said Miss Tox.

There was something in this. Mrs Pipchin's husband having broken his
heart of the Peruvian mines was good. It had a rich sound. Besides, Mr
Dombey was in a state almost amounting to consternation at the idea
of Paul remaining where he was one hour after his removal had been
recommended by the medical practitioner. It was a stoppage and delay
upon the road the child must traverse, slowly at the best, before the
goal was reached. Their recommendation of Mrs Pipchin had great weight
with him; for he knew that they were jealous of any interference with
their charge, and he never for a moment took it into account that they
might be solicitous to divide a responsibility, of which he had, as
shown just now, his own established views. Broke his heart of the
Peruvian mines, mused Mr Dombey. Well! a very respectable way of doing
It.

'Supposing we should decide, on to-morrow's inquiries, to send Paul down
to Brighton to this lady, who would go with him?' inquired Mr Dombey,
after some reflection.

'I don't think you could send the child anywhere at present without
Florence, my dear Paul,' returned his sister, hesitating. 'It's quite an
infatuation with him. He's very young, you know, and has his fancies.'

Mr Dombey turned his head away, and going slowly to the bookcase, and
unlocking it, brought back a book to read.

'Anybody else, Louisa?' he said, without looking up, and turning over
the leaves.

'Wickam, of course. Wickam would be quite sufficient, I should say,'
returned his sister. 'Paul being in such hands as Mrs Pipchin's, you
could hardly send anybody who would be a further check upon her. You
would go down yourself once a week at least, of course.'

'Of course,' said Mr Dombey; and sat looking at one page for an hour
afterwards, without reading one word.

This celebrated Mrs Pipchin was a marvellous ill-favoured,
ill-conditioned old lady, of a stooping figure, with a mottled face,
like bad marble, a hook nose, and a hard grey eye, that looked as if it
might have been hammered at on an anvil without sustaining any injury.
Forty years at least had elapsed since the Peruvian mines had been the
death of Mr Pipchin; but his relict still wore black bombazeen, of such
a lustreless, deep, dead, sombre shade, that gas itself couldn't light
her up after dark, and her presence was a quencher to any number of
candles. She was generally spoken of as 'a great manager' of children;
and the secret of her management was, to give them everything that they
didn't like, and nothing that they did--which was found to sweeten their
dispositions very much. She was such a bitter old lady, that one was
tempted to believe there had been some mistake in the application of
the Peruvian machinery, and that all her waters of gladness and milk of
human kindness, had been pumped out dry, instead of the mines.

The Castle of this ogress and child-queller was in a steep by-street
at Brighton; where the soil was more than usually chalky, flinty, and
sterile, and the houses were more than usually brittle and thin; where
the small front-gardens had the unaccountable property of producing
nothing but marigolds, whatever was sown in them; and where snails were
constantly discovered holding on to the street doors, and other
public places they were not expected to ornament, with the tenacity of
cupping-glasses. In the winter time the air couldn't be got out of the
Castle, and in the summer time it couldn't be got in. There was such
a continual reverberation of wind in it, that it sounded like a great
shell, which the inhabitants were obliged to hold to their ears
night and day, whether they liked it or no. It was not, naturally, a
fresh-smelling house; and in the window of the front parlour, which was
never opened, Mrs Pipchin kept a collection of plants in pots, which
imparted an earthy flavour of their own to the establishment. However
choice examples of their kind, too, these plants were of a kind
peculiarly adapted to the embowerment of Mrs Pipchin. There were
half-a-dozen specimens of the cactus, writhing round bits of lath, like
hairy serpents; another specimen shooting out broad claws, like a green
lobster; several creeping vegetables, possessed of sticky and adhesive
leaves; and one uncomfortable flower-pot hanging to the ceiling, which
appeared to have boiled over, and tickling people underneath with
its long green ends, reminded them of spiders--in which Mrs Pipchin's
dwelling was uncommonly prolific, though perhaps it challenged
competition still more proudly, in the season, in point of earwigs.

Mrs Pipchin's scale of charges being high, however, to all who could
afford to pay, and Mrs Pipchin very seldom sweetening the equable
acidity of her nature in favour of anybody, she was held to be an old
'lady of remarkable firmness, who was quite scientific in her knowledge
of the childish character.' On this reputation, and on the broken heart
of Mr Pipchin, she had contrived, taking one year with another, to eke
out a tolerable sufficient living since her husband's demise. Within
three days after Mrs Chick's first allusion to her, this excellent old
lady had the satisfaction of anticipating a handsome addition to
her current receipts, from the pocket of Mr Dombey; and of receiving
Florence and her little brother Paul, as inmates of the Castle.

Mrs Chick and Miss Tox, who had brought them down on the previous night
(which they all passed at an Hotel), had just driven away from the door,
on their journey home again; and Mrs Pipchin, with her back to the fire,
stood, reviewing the new-comers, like an old soldier. Mrs Pipchin's
middle-aged niece, her good-natured and devoted slave, but possessing a
gaunt and iron-bound aspect, and much afflicted with boils on her nose,
was divesting Master Bitherstone of the clean collar he had worn on
parade. Miss Pankey, the only other little boarder at present, had that
moment been walked off to the Castle Dungeon (an empty apartment at the
back, devoted to correctional purposes), for having sniffed thrice, in
the presence of visitors.

'Well, Sir,' said Mrs Pipchin to Paul, 'how do you think you shall like
me?'

'I don't think I shall like you at all,' replied Paul. 'I want to go
away. This isn't my house.'

'No. It's mine,' retorted Mrs Pipchin.

'It's a very nasty one,' said Paul.

'There's a worse place in it than this though,' said Mrs Pipchin, 'where
we shut up our bad boys.'

'Has he ever been in it?' asked Paul: pointing out Master Bitherstone.

Mrs Pipchin nodded assent; and Paul had enough to do, for the rest
of that day, in surveying Master Bitherstone from head to foot,
and watching all the workings of his countenance, with the interest
attaching to a boy of mysterious and terrible experiences.

At one o'clock there was a dinner, chiefly of the farinaceous and
vegetable kind, when Miss Pankey (a mild little blue-eyed morsel of a
child, who was shampoo'd every morning, and seemed in danger of being
rubbed away, altogether) was led in from captivity by the ogress
herself, and instructed that nobody who sniffed before visitors ever
went to Heaven. When this great truth had been thoroughly impressed upon
her, she was regaled with rice; and subsequently repeated the form of
grace established in the Castle, in which there was a special clause,
thanking Mrs Pipchin for a good dinner. Mrs Pipchin's niece, Berinthia,
took cold pork. Mrs Pipchin, whose constitution required warm
nourishment, made a special repast of mutton-chops, which were brought
in hot and hot, between two plates, and smelt very nice.

As it rained after dinner, and they couldn't go out walking on the
beach, and Mrs Pipchin's constitution required rest after chops, they
went away with Berry (otherwise Berinthia) to the Dungeon; an empty room
looking out upon a chalk wall and a water-butt, and made ghastly by a
ragged fireplace without any stove in it. Enlivened by company, however,
this was the best place after all; for Berry played with them there, and
seemed to enjoy a game at romps as much as they did; until Mrs Pipchin
knocking angrily at the wall, like the Cock Lane Ghost revived, they
left off, and Berry told them stories in a whisper until twilight.

For tea there was plenty of milk and water, and bread and butter, with
a little black tea-pot for Mrs Pipchin and Berry, and buttered toast
unlimited for Mrs Pipchin, which was brought in, hot and hot, like the
chops. Though Mrs Pipchin got very greasy, outside, over this dish, it
didn't seem to lubricate her internally, at all; for she was as fierce
as ever, and the hard grey eye knew no softening.

After tea, Berry brought out a little work-box, with the Royal Pavilion
on the lid, and fell to working busily; while Mrs Pipchin, having put on
her spectacles and opened a great volume bound in green baize, began to
nod. And whenever Mrs Pipchin caught herself falling forward into the
fire, and woke up, she filliped Master Bitherstone on the nose for
nodding too.

At last it was the children's bedtime, and after prayers they went to
bed. As little Miss Pankey was afraid of sleeping alone in the dark,
Mrs Pipchin always made a point of driving her upstairs herself, like a
sheep; and it was cheerful to hear Miss Pankey moaning long afterwards,
in the least eligible chamber, and Mrs Pipchin now and then going in
to shake her. At about half-past nine o'clock the odour of a warm
sweet-bread (Mrs Pipchin's constitution wouldn't go to sleep without
sweet-bread) diversified the prevailing fragrance of the house, which
Mrs Wickam said was 'a smell of building;' and slumber fell upon the
Castle shortly after.

The breakfast next morning was like the tea over night, except that Mrs
Pipchin took her roll instead of toast, and seemed a little more irate
when it was over. Master Bitherstone read aloud to the rest a pedigree
from Genesis (judiciously selected by Mrs Pipchin), getting over the
names with the ease and clearness of a person tumbling up the treadmill.
That done, Miss Pankey was borne away to be shampoo'd; and Master
Bitherstone to have something else done to him with salt water, from
which he always returned very blue and dejected. Paul and Florence went
out in the meantime on the beach with Wickam--who was constantly in
tears--and at about noon Mrs Pipchin presided over some Early Readings.
It being a part of Mrs Pipchin's system not to encourage a child's mind
to develop and expand itself like a young flower, but to open it by
force like an oyster, the moral of these lessons was usually of a
violent and stunning character: the hero--a naughty boy--seldom, in the
mildest catastrophe, being finished off anything less than a lion, or a
bear.

Such was life at Mrs Pipchin's. On Saturday Mr Dombey came down; and
Florence and Paul would go to his Hotel, and have tea They passed the
whole of Sunday with him, and generally rode out before dinner; and on
these occasions Mr Dombey seemed to grow, like Falstaff's assailants,
and instead of being one man in buckram, to become a dozen. Sunday
evening was the most melancholy evening in the week; for Mrs Pipchin
always made a point of being particularly cross on Sunday nights. Miss
Pankey was generally brought back from an aunt's at Rottingdean, in deep
distress; and Master Bitherstone, whose relatives were all in India, and
who was required to sit, between the services, in an erect position
with his head against the parlour wall, neither moving hand nor foot,
suffered so acutely in his young spirits that he once asked Florence,
on a Sunday night, if she could give him any idea of the way back to
Bengal.

But it was generally said that Mrs Pipchin was a woman of system with
children; and no doubt she was. Certainly the wild ones went home tame
enough, after sojourning for a few months beneath her hospitable roof.
It was generally said, too, that it was highly creditable of Mrs Pipchin
to have devoted herself to this way of life, and to have made such
a sacrifice of her feelings, and such a resolute stand against her
troubles, when Mr Pipchin broke his heart in the Peruvian mines.

At this exemplary old lady, Paul would sit staring in his little
arm-chair by the fire, for any length of time. He never seemed to know
what weariness was, when he was looking fixedly at Mrs Pipchin. He was
not fond of her; he was not afraid of her; but in those old, old moods
of his, she seemed to have a grotesque attraction for him. There he
would sit, looking at her, and warming his hands, and looking at her,
until he sometimes quite confounded Mrs Pipchin, Ogress as she was. Once
she asked him, when they were alone, what he was thinking about.

'You,' said Paul, without the least reserve.

'And what are you thinking about me?' asked Mrs Pipchin.

'I'm thinking how old you must be,' said Paul.

'You mustn't say such things as that, young gentleman,' returned the
dame. 'That'll never do.'

'Why not?' asked Paul.

'Because it's not polite,' said Mrs Pipchin, snappishly.

'Not polite?' said Paul.

'No.'

'It's not polite,' said Paul, innocently, 'to eat all the mutton chops
and toast', Wickam says.

'Wickam,' retorted Mrs Pipchin, colouring, 'is a wicked, impudent,
bold-faced hussy.'

'What's that?' inquired Paul.

'Never you mind, Sir,' retorted Mrs Pipchin. 'Remember the story of the
little boy that was gored to death by a mad bull for asking questions.'

'If the bull was mad,' said Paul, 'how did he know that the boy had
asked questions? Nobody can go and whisper secrets to a mad bull. I
don't believe that story.'

'You don't believe it, Sir?' repeated Mrs Pipchin, amazed.

'No,' said Paul.

'Not if it should happen to have been a tame bull, you little Infidel?'
said Mrs Pipchin.

As Paul had not considered the subject in that light, and had founded
his conclusions on the alleged lunacy of the bull, he allowed himself
to be put down for the present. But he sat turning it over in his mind,
with such an obvious intention of fixing Mrs Pipchin presently, that
even that hardy old lady deemed it prudent to retreat until he should
have forgotten the subject.

From that time, Mrs Pipchin appeared to have something of the same odd
kind of attraction towards Paul, as Paul had towards her. She would make
him move his chair to her side of the fire, instead of sitting opposite;
and there he would remain in a nook between Mrs Pipchin and the fender,
with all the light of his little face absorbed into the black bombazeen
drapery, studying every line and wrinkle of her countenance, and peering
at the hard grey eye, until Mrs Pipchin was sometimes fain to shut it,
on pretence of dozing. Mrs Pipchin had an old black cat, who generally
lay coiled upon the centre foot of the fender, purring egotistically,
and winking at the fire until the contracted pupils of his eyes were
like two notes of admiration. The good old lady might have been--not
to record it disrespectfully--a witch, and Paul and the cat her two
familiars, as they all sat by the fire together. It would have been
quite in keeping with the appearance of the party if they had all sprung
up the chimney in a high wind one night, and never been heard of any
more.

This, however, never came to pass. The cat, and Paul, and Mrs Pipchin,
were constantly to be found in their usual places after dark; and Paul,
eschewing the companionship of Master Bitherstone, went on studying Mrs
Pipchin, and the cat, and the fire, night after night, as if they were a
book of necromancy, in three volumes.

Mrs Wickam put her own construction on Paul's eccentricities; and being
confirmed in her low spirits by a perplexed view of chimneys from the
room where she was accustomed to sit, and by the noise of the wind, and
by the general dulness (gashliness was Mrs Wickam's strong expression)
of her present life, deduced the most dismal reflections from the
foregoing premises. It was a part of Mrs Pipchin's policy to prevent
her own 'young hussy'--that was Mrs Pipchin's generic name for female
servant--from communicating with Mrs Wickam: to which end she devoted
much of her time to concealing herself behind doors, and springing
out on that devoted maiden, whenever she made an approach towards Mrs
Wickam's apartment. But Berry was free to hold what converse she could
in that quarter, consistently with the discharge of the multifarious
duties at which she toiled incessantly from morning to night; and to
Berry Mrs Wickam unburdened her mind.

'What a pretty fellow he is when he's asleep!' said Berry, stopping to
look at Paul in bed, one night when she took up Mrs Wickam's supper.

'Ah!' sighed Mrs Wickam. 'He need be.'

'Why, he's not ugly when he's awake,' observed Berry.

'No, Ma'am. Oh, no. No more was my Uncle's Betsey Jane,' said Mrs
Wickam.

Berry looked as if she would like to trace the connexion of ideas
between Paul Dombey and Mrs Wickam's Uncle's Betsey Jane.

'My Uncle's wife,' Mrs Wickam went on to say, 'died just like his Mama.
My Uncle's child took on just as Master Paul do.'

'Took on! You don't think he grieves for his Mama, sure?' argued Berry,
sitting down on the side of the bed. 'He can't remember anything about
her, you know, Mrs Wickam. It's not possible.'

'No, Ma'am,' said Mrs Wickam 'No more did my Uncle's child. But my
Uncle's child said very strange things sometimes, and looked very
strange, and went on very strange, and was very strange altogether. My
Uncle's child made people's blood run cold, some times, she did!'

'How?' asked Berry.

'I wouldn't have sat up all night alone with Betsey Jane!' said Mrs
Wickam, 'not if you'd have put Wickam into business next morning for
himself. I couldn't have done it, Miss Berry.

Miss Berry naturally asked why not? But Mrs Wickam, agreeably to the
usage of some ladies in her condition, pursued her own branch of the
subject, without any compunction.

'Betsey Jane,' said Mrs Wickam, 'was as sweet a child as I could wish
to see. I couldn't wish to see a sweeter. Everything that a child could
have in the way of illnesses, Betsey Jane had come through. The cramps
was as common to her,' said Mrs Wickam, 'as biles is to yourself, Miss
Berry.' Miss Berry involuntarily wrinkled her nose.

'But Betsey Jane,' said Mrs Wickam, lowering her voice, and looking
round the room, and towards Paul in bed, 'had been minded, in her
cradle, by her departed mother. I couldn't say how, nor I couldn't say
when, nor I couldn't say whether the dear child knew it or not, but
Betsey Jane had been watched by her mother, Miss Berry!' and Mrs Wickam,
with a very white face, and with watery eyes, and with a tremulous
voice, again looked fearfully round the room, and towards Paul in bed.

'Nonsense!' cried Miss Berry--somewhat resentful of the idea.

'You may say nonsense! I ain't offended, Miss. I hope you may be able
to think in your own conscience that it is nonsense; you'll find
your spirits all the better for it in this--you'll excuse my being so
free--in this burying-ground of a place; which is wearing of me down.
Master Paul's a little restless in his sleep. Pat his back, if you
please.'

'Of course you think,' said Berry, gently doing what she was asked,
'that he has been nursed by his mother, too?'

'Betsey Jane,' returned Mrs Wickam in her most solemn tones, 'was put
upon as that child has been put upon, and changed as that child has
changed. I have seen her sit, often and often, think, think, thinking,
like him. I have seen her look, often and often, old, old, old, like
him. I have heard her, many a time, talk just like him. I consider that
child and Betsey Jane on the same footing entirely, Miss Berry.'

'Is your Uncle's child alive?' asked Berry.

'Yes, Miss, she is alive,' returned Mrs Wickam with an air of triumph,
for it was evident. Miss Berry expected the reverse; 'and is married to
a silver-chaser. Oh yes, Miss, SHE is alive,' said Mrs Wickam, laying
strong stress on her nominative case.

It being clear that somebody was dead, Mrs Pipchin's niece inquired who
it was.

'I wouldn't wish to make you uneasy,' returned Mrs Wickam, pursuing her
supper. 'Don't ask me.'

This was the surest way of being asked again. Miss Berry repeated her
question, therefore; and after some resistance, and reluctance, Mrs
Wickam laid down her knife, and again glancing round the room and at
Paul in bed, replied:

'She took fancies to people; whimsical fancies, some of them; others,
affections that one might expect to see--only stronger than common. They
all died.'

This was so very unexpected and awful to Mrs Pipchin's niece, that
she sat upright on the hard edge of the bedstead, breathing short, and
surveying her informant with looks of undisguised alarm.

Mrs Wickam shook her left fore-finger stealthily towards the bed where
Florence lay; then turned it upside down, and made several emphatic
points at the floor; immediately below which was the parlour in which
Mrs Pipchin habitually consumed the toast.

'Remember my words, Miss Berry,' said Mrs Wickam, 'and be thankful that
Master Paul is not too fond of you. I am, that he's not too fond of
me, I assure you; though there isn't much to live for--you'll excuse my
being so free--in this jail of a house!'

Miss Berry's emotion might have led to her patting Paul too hard on the
back, or might have produced a cessation of that soothing monotony, but
he turned in his bed just now, and, presently awaking, sat up in it with
his hair hot and wet from the effects of some childish dream, and asked
for Florence.

She was out of her own bed at the first sound of his voice; and bending
over his pillow immediately, sang him to sleep again. Mrs Wickam shaking
her head, and letting fall several tears, pointed out the little group
to Berry, and turned her eyes up to the ceiling.

'He's asleep now, my dear,' said Mrs Wickam after a pause, 'you'd better
go to bed again. Don't you feel cold?'

'No, nurse,' said Florence, laughing. 'Not at all.'

'Ah!' sighed Mrs Wickam, and she shook her head again, expressing to the
watchful Berry, 'we shall be cold enough, some of us, by and by!'

Berry took the frugal supper-tray, with which Mrs Wickam had by this
time done, and bade her good-night.

'Good-night, Miss!' returned Wickam softly. 'Good-night! Your aunt is an
old lady, Miss Berry, and it's what you must have looked for, often.'

This consolatory farewell, Mrs Wickam accompanied with a look of
heartfelt anguish; and being left alone with the two children again, and
becoming conscious that the wind was blowing mournfully, she indulged in
melancholy--that cheapest and most accessible of luxuries--until she was
overpowered by slumber.

Although the niece of Mrs Pipchin did not expect to find that exemplary
dragon prostrate on the hearth-rug when she went downstairs, she was
relieved to find her unusually fractious and severe, and with every
present appearance of intending to live a long time to be a comfort to
all who knew her. Nor had she any symptoms of declining, in the course
of the ensuing week, when the constitutional viands still continued to
disappear in regular succession, notwithstanding that Paul studied her
as attentively as ever, and occupied his usual seat between the black
skirts and the fender, with unwavering constancy.

But as Paul himself was no stronger at the expiration of that time than
he had been on his first arrival, though he looked much healthier in the
face, a little carriage was got for him, in which he could lie at his
ease, with an alphabet and other elementary works of reference, and be
wheeled down to the sea-side. Consistent in his odd tastes, the child
set aside a ruddy-faced lad who was proposed as the drawer of this
carriage, and selected, instead, his grandfather--a weazen, old,
crab-faced man, in a suit of battered oilskin, who had got tough and
stringy from long pickling in salt water, and who smelt like a weedy
sea-beach when the tide is out.

With this notable attendant to pull him along, and Florence always
walking by his side, and the despondent Wickam bringing up the rear, he
went down to the margin of the ocean every day; and there he would sit
or lie in his carriage for hours together: never so distressed as by the
company of children--Florence alone excepted, always.

'Go away, if you please,' he would say to any child who came to bear him
company. 'Thank you, but I don't want you.'

Some small voice, near his ear, would ask him how he was, perhaps.

'I am very well, I thank you,' he would answer. 'But you had better go
and play, if you please.'

Then he would turn his head, and watch the child away, and say to
Florence, 'We don't want any others, do we? Kiss me, Floy.'

He had even a dislike, at such times, to the company of Wickam, and was
well pleased when she strolled away, as she generally did, to pick up
shells and acquaintances. His favourite spot was quite a lonely one, far
away from most loungers; and with Florence sitting by his side at work,
or reading to him, or talking to him, and the wind blowing on his face,
and the water coming up among the wheels of his bed, he wanted nothing
more.

'Floy,' he said one day, 'where's India, where that boy's friends live?'

'Oh, it's a long, long distance off,' said Florence, raising her eyes
from her work.

'Weeks off?' asked Paul.

'Yes dear. Many weeks' journey, night and day.'

'If you were in India, Floy,' said Paul, after being silent for a
minute, 'I should--what is it that Mama did? I forget.'

'Loved me!' answered Florence.

'No, no. Don't I love you now, Floy? What is it?--Died. If you were in
India, I should die, Floy.'

She hurriedly put her work aside, and laid her head down on his pillow,
caressing him. And so would she, she said, if he were there. He would be
better soon.

'Oh! I am a great deal better now!' he answered. 'I don't mean that. I
mean that I should die of being so sorry and so lonely, Floy!'

Another time, in the same place, he fell asleep, and slept quietly for a
long time. Awaking suddenly, he listened, started up, and sat listening.

Florence asked him what he thought he heard.

'I want to know what it says,' he answered, looking steadily in her
face. 'The sea' Floy, what is it that it keeps on saying?'

She told him that it was only the noise of the rolling waves.

'Yes, yes,' he said. 'But I know that they are always saying something.
Always the same thing. What place is over there?' He rose up, looking
eagerly at the horizon.

She told him that there was another country opposite, but he said he
didn't mean that: he meant further away--farther away!

Very often afterwards, in the midst of their talk, he would break off,
to try to understand what it was that the waves were always saying; and
would rise up in his couch to look towards that invisible region, far
away.

Paul grows up under the care of a new nurse, Mrs. Wickam, with Miss Tox and Mrs. Chick hovering over him at all times. Nonetheless, he is delicate and sickly, and has a dreamy, melancholy disposition. When Mr. Dombey expresses concerns about his son to Mrs. Chick and Miss Tox, they suggest he would benefit from spending time at the seashore at Brighton and recommend Mrs. Pipchin, who has a residence for ailing children there. Mrs. Wickam accompanies him, and Florence is sent there as well, since Paul is very attached to her. Mrs. Pipchin is a cold and unkind woman, and Florence and Paul lead a lonely life there. Paul continues to be withdrawn and contemplative, often making Mrs. Pipchin and her niece/assistant Barry uncomfortable


That spice of romance and love of the marvellous, of which there was a
pretty strong infusion in the nature of young Walter Gay, and which the
guardianship of his Uncle, old Solomon Gills, had not very much weakened
by the waters of stern practical experience, was the occasion of his
attaching an uncommon and delightful interest to the adventure of
Florence with Good Mrs Brown. He pampered and cherished it in his
memory, especially that part of it with which he had been associated:
until it became the spoiled child of his fancy, and took its own way,
and did what it liked with it.

The recollection of those incidents, and his own share in them, may have
been made the more captivating, perhaps, by the weekly dreamings of
old Sol and Captain Cuttle on Sundays. Hardly a Sunday passed, without
mysterious references being made by one or other of those worthy chums
to Richard Whittington; and the latter gentleman had even gone so far as
to purchase a ballad of considerable antiquity, that had long fluttered
among many others, chiefly expressive of maritime sentiments, on a dead
wall in the Commercial Road: which poetical performance set forth the
courtship and nuptials of a promising young coal-whipper with a certain
'lovely Peg,' the accomplished daughter of the master and part-owner of
a Newcastle collier. In this stirring legend, Captain Cuttle descried a
profound metaphysical bearing on the case of Walter and Florence; and it
excited him so much, that on very festive occasions, as birthdays and a
few other non-Dominical holidays, he would roar through the whole song
in the little back parlour; making an amazing shake on the word Pe-e-eg,
with which every verse concluded, in compliment to the heroine of the
piece.

But a frank, free-spirited, open-hearted boy, is not much given to
analysing the nature of his own feelings, however strong their hold upon
him: and Walter would have found it difficult to decide this point. He
had a great affection for the wharf where he had encountered Florence,
and for the streets (albeit not enchanting in themselves) by which they
had come home. The shoes that had so often tumbled off by the way, he
preserved in his own room; and, sitting in the little back parlour of
an evening, he had drawn a whole gallery of fancy portraits of Good Mrs
Brown. It may be that he became a little smarter in his dress after that
memorable occasion; and he certainly liked in his leisure time to walk
towards that quarter of the town where Mr Dombey's house was situated,
on the vague chance of passing little Florence in the street. But the
sentiment of all this was as boyish and innocent as could be. Florence
was very pretty, and it is pleasant to admire a pretty face. Florence
was defenceless and weak, and it was a proud thought that he had been
able to render her any protection and assistance. Florence was the most
grateful little creature in the world, and it was delightful to see her
bright gratitude beaming in her face. Florence was neglected and coldly
looked upon, and his breast was full of youthful interest for the
slighted child in her dull, stately home.

Thus it came about that, perhaps some half-a-dozen times in the course
of the year, Walter pulled off his hat to Florence in the street,
and Florence would stop to shake hands. Mrs Wickam (who, with a
characteristic alteration of his name, invariably spoke of him as
'Young Graves') was so well used to this, knowing the story of their
acquaintance, that she took no heed of it at all. Miss Nipper, on the
other hand, rather looked out for these occasions: her sensitive young
heart being secretly propitiated by Walter's good looks, and inclining
to the belief that its sentiments were responded to.

In this way, Walter, so far from forgetting or losing sight of his
acquaintance with Florence, only remembered it better and better. As to
its adventurous beginning, and all those little circumstances which gave
it a distinctive character and relish, he took them into account, more
as a pleasant story very agreeable to his imagination, and not to be
dismissed from it, than as a part of any matter of fact with which he
was concerned. They set off Florence very much, to his fancy; but not
himself. Sometimes he thought (and then he walked very fast) what a
grand thing it would have been for him to have been going to sea on the
day after that first meeting, and to have gone, and to have done wonders
there, and to have stopped away a long time, and to have come back an
Admiral of all the colours of the dolphin, or at least a Post-Captain
with epaulettes of insupportable brightness, and have married Florence
(then a beautiful young woman) in spite of Mr Dombey's teeth, cravat,
and watch-chain, and borne her away to the blue shores of somewhere or
other, triumphantly. But these flights of fancy seldom burnished the
brass plate of Dombey and Son's Offices into a tablet of golden hope, or
shed a brilliant lustre on their dirty skylights; and when the Captain
and Uncle Sol talked about Richard Whittington and masters' daughters,
Walter felt that he understood his true position at Dombey and Son's,
much better than they did.

So it was that he went on doing what he had to do from day to day, in
a cheerful, pains-taking, merry spirit; and saw through the sanguine
complexion of Uncle Sol and Captain Cuttle; and yet entertained a
thousand indistinct and visionary fancies of his own, to which theirs
were work-a-day probabilities. Such was his condition at the Pipchin
period, when he looked a little older than of yore, but not much; and
was the same light-footed, light-hearted, light-headed lad, as when
he charged into the parlour at the head of Uncle Sol and the imaginary
boarders, and lighted him to bring up the Madeira.

'Uncle Sol,' said Walter, 'I don't think you're well. You haven't eaten
any breakfast. I shall bring a doctor to you, if you go on like this.'

'He can't give me what I want, my boy,' said Uncle Sol. 'At least he is
in good practice if he can--and then he wouldn't.'

'What is it, Uncle? Customers?'

'Ay,' returned Solomon, with a sigh. 'Customers would do.'

'Confound it, Uncle!' said Walter, putting down his breakfast cup with
a clatter, and striking his hand on the table: 'when I see the people
going up and down the street in shoals all day, and passing and
re-passing the shop every minute, by scores, I feel half tempted to rush
out, collar somebody, bring him in, and make him buy fifty pounds' worth
of instruments for ready money. What are you looking in at the door
for?--' continued Walter, apostrophizing an old gentleman with a
powdered head (inaudibly to him of course), who was staring at a ship's
telescope with all his might and main. 'That's no use. I could do that.
Come in and buy it!'

The old gentleman, however, having satiated his curiosity, walked calmly
away.

'There he goes!' said Walter. 'That's the way with 'em all. But,
Uncle--I say, Uncle Sol'--for the old man was meditating and had not
responded to his first appeal. 'Don't be cast down. Don't be out of
spirits, Uncle. When orders do come, they'll come in such a crowd, you
won't be able to execute 'em.'

'I shall be past executing 'em, whenever they come, my boy,' returned
Solomon Gills. 'They'll never come to this shop again, till I am out of
t.'

'I say, Uncle! You musn't really, you know!' urged Walter. 'Don't!'

Old Sol endeavoured to assume a cheery look, and smiled across the
little table at him as pleasantly as he could.

'There's nothing more than usual the matter; is there, Uncle?' said
Walter, leaning his elbows on the tea tray, and bending over, to speak
the more confidentially and kindly. 'Be open with me, Uncle, if there
is, and tell me all about it.'

'No, no, no,' returned Old Sol. 'More than usual? No, no. What should
there be the matter more than usual?'

Walter answered with an incredulous shake of his head. 'That's what I
want to know,' he said, 'and you ask me! I'll tell you what, Uncle, when
I see you like this, I am quite sorry that I live with you.'

Old Sol opened his eyes involuntarily.

'Yes. Though nobody ever was happier than I am and always have been with
you, I am quite sorry that I live with you, when I see you with anything
in your mind.'

'I am a little dull at such times, I know,' observed Solomon, meekly
rubbing his hands.

'What I mean, Uncle Sol,' pursued Walter, bending over a little more
to pat him on the shoulder, 'is, that then I feel you ought to have,
sitting here and pouring out the tea instead of me, a nice little
dumpling of a wife, you know,--a comfortable, capital, cosy old lady,
who was just a match for you, and knew how to manage you, and keep you
in good heart. Here am I, as loving a nephew as ever was (I am sure I
ought to be!) but I am only a nephew, and I can't be such a companion
to you when you're low and out of sorts as she would have made herself,
years ago, though I'm sure I'd give any money if I could cheer you up.
And so I say, when I see you with anything on your mind, that I feel
quite sorry you haven't got somebody better about you than a blundering
young rough-and-tough boy like me, who has got the will to console you,
Uncle, but hasn't got the way--hasn't got the way,' repeated Walter,
reaching over further yet, to shake his Uncle by the hand.

'Wally, my dear boy,' said Solomon, 'if the cosy little old lady had
taken her place in this parlour five and forty years ago, I never could
have been fonder of her than I am of you.'

'I know that, Uncle Sol,' returned Walter. 'Lord bless you, I know that.
But you wouldn't have had the whole weight of any uncomfortable secrets
if she had been with you, because she would have known how to relieve
you of 'em, and I don't.'

'Yes, yes, you do,' returned the Instrument-maker.

'Well then, what's the matter, Uncle Sol?' said Walter, coaxingly.
'Come! What's the matter?'

Solomon Gills persisted that there was nothing the matter; and
maintained it so resolutely, that his nephew had no resource but to make
a very indifferent imitation of believing him.

'All I can say is, Uncle Sol, that if there is--'

'But there isn't,' said Solomon.

'Very well,' said Walter. 'Then I've no more to say; and that's lucky,
for my time's up for going to business. I shall look in by-and-by when
I'm out, to see how you get on, Uncle. And mind, Uncle! I'll never
believe you again, and never tell you anything more about Mr Carker the
Junior, if I find out that you have been deceiving me!'

Solomon Gills laughingly defied him to find out anything of the kind;
and Walter, revolving in his thoughts all sorts of impracticable ways
of making fortunes and placing the wooden Midshipman in a position of
independence, betook himself to the offices of Dombey and Son with a
heavier countenance than he usually carried there.

There lived in those days, round the corner--in Bishopsgate Street
Without--one Brogley, sworn broker and appraiser, who kept a shop where
every description of second-hand furniture was exhibited in the most
uncomfortable aspect, and under circumstances and in combinations the
most completely foreign to its purpose. Dozens of chairs hooked on to
washing-stands, which with difficulty poised themselves on the shoulders
of sideboards, which in their turn stood upon the wrong side of
dining-tables, gymnastic with their legs upward on the tops of other
dining-tables, were among its most reasonable arrangements. A banquet
array of dish-covers, wine-glasses, and decanters was generally to
be seen, spread forth upon the bosom of a four-post bedstead, for the
entertainment of such genial company as half-a-dozen pokers, and a hall
lamp. A set of window curtains with no windows belonging to them, would
be seen gracefully draping a barricade of chests of drawers, loaded with
little jars from chemists' shops; while a homeless hearthrug severed
from its natural companion the fireside, braved the shrewd east wind
in its adversity, and trembled in melancholy accord with the shrill
complainings of a cabinet piano, wasting away, a string a day, and
faintly resounding to the noises of the street in its jangling and
distracted brain. Of motionless clocks that never stirred a finger, and
seemed as incapable of being successfully wound up, as the pecuniary
affairs of their former owners, there was always great choice in Mr
Brogley's shop; and various looking-glasses, accidentally placed at
compound interest of reflection and refraction, presented to the eye an
eternal perspective of bankruptcy and ruin.

Mr Brogley himself was a moist-eyed, pink-complexioned, crisp-haired
man, of a bulky figure and an easy temper--for that class of Caius
Marius who sits upon the ruins of other people's Carthages, can keep up
his spirits well enough. He had looked in at Solomon's shop sometimes,
to ask a question about articles in Solomon's way of business; and
Walter knew him sufficiently to give him good day when they met in the
street. But as that was the extent of the broker's acquaintance with
Solomon Gills also, Walter was not a little surprised when he came back
in the course of the forenoon, agreeably to his promise, to find Mr
Brogley sitting in the back parlour with his hands in his pockets, and
his hat hanging up behind the door.

'Well, Uncle Sol!' said Walter. The old man was sitting ruefully on the
opposite side of the table, with his spectacles over his eyes, for a
wonder, instead of on his forehead. 'How are you now?'

Solomon shook his head, and waved one hand towards the broker, as
introducing him.

'Is there anything the matter?' asked Walter, with a catching in his
breath.

'No, no. There's nothing the matter, said Mr Brogley. 'Don't let it put
you out of the way.'

Walter looked from the broker to his Uncle in mute
amazement.

'The fact is,' said Mr Brogley, 'there's a little payment on a bond debt
--three hundred and seventy odd, overdue: and I'm in possession.'

'In possession!' cried Walter, looking round at the shop.

'Ah!' said Mr Brogley, in confidential assent, and nodding his head
as if he would urge the advisability of their all being comfortable
together. 'It's an execution. That's what it is. Don't let it put you
out of the way. I come myself, because of keeping it quiet and sociable.
You know me. It's quite private.'

'Uncle Sol!' faltered Walter.

'Wally, my boy,' returned his uncle. 'It's the first time. Such a
calamity never happened to me before. I'm an old man to begin.' Pushing
up his spectacles again (for they were useless any longer to conceal his
emotion), he covered his face with his hand, and sobbed aloud, and his
tears fell down upon his coffee-coloured waistcoat.

'Uncle Sol! Pray! oh don't!' exclaimed Walter, who really felt a thrill
of terror in seeing the old man weep. 'For God's sake don't do that. Mr
Brogley, what shall I do?'

'I should recommend you looking up a friend or so,' said Mr Brogley,
'and talking it over.'

'To be sure!' cried Walter, catching at anything. 'Certainly! Thankee.
Captain Cuttle's the man, Uncle. Wait till I run to Captain Cuttle.
Keep your eye upon my Uncle, will you, Mr Brogley, and make him as
comfortable as you can while I am gone? Don't despair, Uncle Sol. Try
and keep a good heart, there's a dear fellow!'

Saying this with great fervour, and disregarding the old man's broken
remonstrances, Walter dashed out of the shop again as hard as he could
go; and, having hurried round to the office to excuse himself on the
plea of his Uncle's sudden illness, set off, full speed, for Captain
Cuttle's residence.

Everything seemed altered as he ran along the streets. There were the
usual entanglement and noise of carts, drays, omnibuses, waggons,
and foot passengers, but the misfortune that had fallen on the wooden
Midshipman made it strange and new. Houses and shops were different from
what they used to be, and bore Mr Brogley's warrant on their fronts
in large characters. The broker seemed to have got hold of the very
churches; for their spires rose into the sky with an unwonted air. Even
the sky itself was changed, and had an execution in it plainly.

Captain Cuttle lived on the brink of a little canal near the India
Docks, where there was a swivel bridge which opened now and then to
let some wandering monster of a ship come roaming up the street like
a stranded leviathan. The gradual change from land to water, on the
approach to Captain Cuttle's lodgings, was curious. It began with the
erection of flagstaffs, as appurtenances to public-houses; then came
slop-sellers' shops, with Guernsey shirts, sou'wester hats, and canvas
pantaloons, at once the tightest and the loosest of their order, hanging
up outside. These were succeeded by anchor and chain-cable forges, where
sledgehammers were dinging upon iron all day long. Then came rows of
houses, with little vane-surmounted masts uprearing themselves from
among the scarlet beans. Then, ditches. Then, pollard willows. Then,
more ditches. Then, unaccountable patches of dirty water, hardly to be
descried, for the ships that covered them. Then, the air was perfumed
with chips; and all other trades were swallowed up in mast, oar,
and block-making, and boatbuilding. Then, the ground grew marshy and
unsettled. Then, there was nothing to be smelt but rum and sugar. Then,
Captain Cuttle's lodgings--at once a first floor and a top storey, in
Brig Place--were close before you.

The Captain was one of those timber-looking men, suits of oak as well
as hearts, whom it is almost impossible for the liveliest imagination
to separate from any part of their dress, however insignificant.
Accordingly, when Walter knocked at the door, and the Captain instantly
poked his head out of one of his little front windows, and hailed him,
with the hard glared hat already on it, and the shirt-collar like a
sail, and the wide suit of blue, all standing as usual, Walter was as
fully persuaded that he was always in that state, as if the Captain had
been a bird and those had been his feathers.

'Wal'r, my lad!' said Captain Cuttle. 'Stand by and knock again. Hard!
It's washing day.'

Walter, in his impatience, gave a prodigious thump with the knocker.

'Hard it is!' said Captain Cuttle, and immediately drew in his head, as
if he expected a squall.

Nor was he mistaken: for a widow lady, with her sleeves rolled up to
her shoulders, and her arms frothy with soap-suds and smoking with hot
water, replied to the summons with startling rapidity. Before she looked
at Walter she looked at the knocker, and then, measuring him with her
eyes from head to foot, said she wondered he had left any of it.

'Captain Cuttle's at home, I know,' said Walter with a conciliatory
smile.

'Is he?' replied the widow lady. 'In-deed!'

'He has just been speaking to me,' said Walter, in breathless
explanation.

'Has he?' replied the widow lady. 'Then p'raps you'll give him Mrs
MacStinger's respects, and say that the next time he lowers himself and
his lodgings by talking out of the winder she'll thank him to come down
and open the door too.' Mrs MacStinger spoke loud, and listened for any
observations that might be offered from the first floor.

'I'll mention it,' said Walter, 'if you'll have the goodness to let me
in, Ma'am.'

For he was repelled by a wooden fortification extending across the
doorway, and put there to prevent the little MacStingers in their
moments of recreation from tumbling down the steps.

'A boy that can knock my door down,' said Mrs MacStinger,
contemptuously, 'can get over that, I should hope!' But Walter, taking
this as a permission to enter, and getting over it, Mrs MacStinger
immediately demanded whether an Englishwoman's house was her castle
or not; and whether she was to be broke in upon by 'raff.' On these
subjects her thirst for information was still very importunate,
when Walter, having made his way up the little staircase through an
artificial fog occasioned by the washing, which covered the banisters
with a clammy perspiration, entered Captain Cuttle's room, and found
that gentleman in ambush behind the door.

'Never owed her a penny, Wal'r,' said Captain Cuttle, in a low voice,
and with visible marks of trepidation on his countenance. 'Done her
a world of good turns, and the children too. Vixen at times, though.
Whew!'

'I should go away, Captain Cuttle,' said Walter.

'Dursn't do it, Wal'r,' returned the Captain. 'She'd find me out,
wherever I went. Sit down. How's Gills?'

The Captain was dining (in his hat) off cold loin of mutton, porter, and
some smoking hot potatoes, which he had cooked himself, and took out of
a little saucepan before the fire as he wanted them. He unscrewed his
hook at dinner-time, and screwed a knife into its wooden socket instead,
with which he had already begun to peel one of these potatoes for
Walter. His rooms were very small, and strongly impregnated with
tobacco-smoke, but snug enough: everything being stowed away, as if
there were an earthquake regularly every half-hour.

'How's Gills?' inquired the Captain.

Walter, who had by this time recovered his breath, and lost his
spirits--or such temporary spirits as his rapid journey had given
him--looked at his questioner for a moment, said 'Oh, Captain Cuttle!'
and burst into tears.

No words can describe the Captain's consternation at this sight Mrs
MacStinger faded into nothing before it. He dropped the potato and the
fork--and would have dropped the knife too if he could--and sat gazing
at the boy, as if he expected to hear next moment that a gulf had opened
in the City, which had swallowed up his old friend, coffee-coloured
suit, buttons, chronometer, spectacles, and all.

But when Walter told him what was really the matter, Captain Cuttle,
after a moment's reflection, started up into full activity. He emptied
out of a little tin canister on the top shelf of the cupboard, his whole
stock of ready money (amounting to thirteen pounds and half-a-crown),
which he transferred to one of the pockets of his square blue coat;
further enriched that repository with the contents of his plate chest,
consisting of two withered atomies of tea-spoons, and an obsolete pair
of knock-knee'd sugar-tongs; pulled up his immense double-cased silver
watch from the depths in which it reposed, to assure himself that that
valuable was sound and whole; re-attached the hook to his right wrist;
and seizing the stick covered over with knobs, bade Walter come along.

Remembering, however, in the midst of his virtuous excitement, that Mrs
MacStinger might be lying in wait below, Captain Cuttle hesitated at
last, not without glancing at the window, as if he had some thoughts
of escaping by that unusual means of egress, rather than encounter his
terrible enemy. He decided, however, in favour of stratagem.

'Wal'r,' said the Captain, with a timid wink, 'go afore, my lad. Sing
out, "good-bye, Captain Cuttle," when you're in the passage, and shut
the door. Then wait at the corner of the street 'till you see me.

These directions were not issued without a previous knowledge of the
enemy's tactics, for when Walter got downstairs, Mrs MacStinger glided
out of the little back kitchen, like an avenging spirit. But not gliding
out upon the Captain, as she had expected, she merely made a further
allusion to the knocker, and glided in again.

Some five minutes elapsed before Captain Cuttle could summon courage
to attempt his escape; for Walter waited so long at the street corner,
looking back at the house, before there were any symptoms of the
hard glazed hat. At length the Captain burst out of the door with the
suddenness of an explosion, and coming towards him at a great pace, and
never once looking over his shoulder, pretended, as soon as they were
well out of the street, to whistle a tune.

'Uncle much hove down, Wal'r?' inquired the Captain, as they were
walking along.

'I am afraid so. If you had seen him this morning, you would never have
forgotten it.'

'Walk fast, Wal'r, my lad,' returned the Captain, mending his pace; 'and
walk the same all the days of your life. Overhaul the catechism for that
advice, and keep it!'

The Captain was too busy with his own thoughts of Solomon Gills, mingled
perhaps with some reflections on his late escape from Mrs MacStinger, to
offer any further quotations on the way for Walter's moral improvement
They interchanged no other word until they arrived at old Sol's door,
where the unfortunate wooden Midshipman, with his instrument at his eye,
seemed to be surveying the whole horizon in search of some friend to
help him out of his difficulty.

'Gills!' said the Captain, hurrying into the back parlour, and taking
him by the hand quite tenderly. 'Lay your head well to the wind, and
we'll fight through it. All you've got to do,' said the Captain, with
the solemnity of a man who was delivering himself of one of the most
precious practical tenets ever discovered by human wisdom, 'is to lay
your head well to the wind, and we'll fight through it!'

Old Sol returned the pressure of his hand, and thanked him.

Captain Cuttle, then, with a gravity suitable to the nature of
the occasion, put down upon the table the two tea-spoons and the
sugar-tongs, the silver watch, and the ready money; and asked Mr
Brogley, the broker, what the damage was.

'Come! What do you make of it?' said Captain Cuttle.

'Why, Lord help you!' returned the broker; 'you don't suppose that
property's of any use, do you?'

'Why not?' inquired the Captain.

'Why? The amount's three hundred and seventy, odd,' replied the broker.

'Never mind,' returned the Captain, though he was evidently dismayed by
the figures: 'all's fish that comes to your net, I suppose?'

'Certainly,' said Mr Brogley. 'But sprats ain't whales, you know.'

The philosophy of this observation seemed to strike the Captain. He
ruminated for a minute; eyeing the broker, meanwhile, as a deep genius;
and then called the Instrument-maker aside.

'Gills,' said Captain Cuttle, 'what's the bearings of this business?
Who's the creditor?'

'Hush!' returned the old man. 'Come away. Don't speak before Wally. It's
a matter of security for Wally's father--an old bond. I've paid a good
deal of it, Ned, but the times are so bad with me that I can't do more
just now. I've foreseen it, but I couldn't help it. Not a word before
Wally, for all the world.'

'You've got some money, haven't you?' whispered the Captain.

'Yes, yes--oh yes--I've got some,' returned old Sol, first putting his
hands into his empty pockets, and then squeezing his Welsh wig between
them, as if he thought he might wring some gold out of it; 'but I--the
little I have got, isn't convertible, Ned; it can't be got at. I have
been trying to do something with it for Wally, and I'm old fashioned,
and behind the time. It's here and there, and--and, in short, it's as
good as nowhere,' said the old man, looking in bewilderment about him.

He had so much the air of a half-witted person who had been hiding his
money in a variety of places, and had forgotten where, that the Captain
followed his eyes, not without a faint hope that he might remember some
few hundred pounds concealed up the chimney, or down in the cellar. But
Solomon Gills knew better than that.

'I'm behind the time altogether, my dear Ned,' said Sol, in resigned
despair, 'a long way. It's no use my lagging on so far behind it. The
stock had better be sold--it's worth more than this debt--and I had
better go and die somewhere, on the balance. I haven't any energy left.
I don't understand things. This had better be the end of it. Let 'em
sell the stock and take him down,' said the old man, pointing feebly to
the wooden Midshipman, 'and let us both be broken up together.'

'And what d'ye mean to do with Wal'r?' said the Captain. 'There, there!
Sit ye down, Gills, sit ye down, and let me think o' this. If I warn't a
man on a small annuity, that was large enough till to-day, I hadn't need
to think of it. But you only lay your head well to the wind,' said the
Captain, again administering that unanswerable piece of consolation,
'and you're all right!'

Old Sol thanked him from his heart, and went and laid it against the
back parlour fire-place instead.

Captain Cuttle walked up and down the shop for some time, cogitating
profoundly, and bringing his bushy black eyebrows to bear so heavily on
his nose, like clouds setting on a mountain, that Walter was afraid to
offer any interruption to the current of his reflections. Mr Brogley,
who was averse to being any constraint upon the party, and who had
an ingenious cast of mind, went, softly whistling, among the stock;
rattling weather-glasses, shaking compasses as if they were physic,
catching up keys with loadstones, looking through telescopes,
endeavouring to make himself acquainted with the use of the globes,
setting parallel rulers astride on to his nose, and amusing himself with
other philosophical transactions.

'Wal'r!' said the Captain at last. 'I've got it.'

'Have you, Captain Cuttle?' cried Walter, with great animation.

'Come this way, my lad,' said the Captain. 'The stock's the security.
I'm another. Your governor's the man to advance money.'

'Mr Dombey!' faltered Walter.

The Captain nodded gravely. 'Look at him,' he said. 'Look at Gills.
If they was to sell off these things now, he'd die of it. You know he
would. We mustn't leave a stone unturned--and there's a stone for you.'

'A stone!--Mr Dombey!' faltered Walter.

'You run round to the office, first of all, and see if he's there,' said
Captain Cuttle, clapping him on the back. 'Quick!'

Walter felt he must not dispute the command--a glance at his Uncle would
have determined him if he had felt otherwise--and disappeared to execute
it. He soon returned, out of breath, to say that Mr Dombey was not
there. It was Saturday, and he had gone to Brighton.

'I tell you what, Wal'r!' said the Captain, who seemed to have prepared
himself for this contingency in his absence. 'We'll go to Brighton.
I'll back you, my boy. I'll back you, Wal'r. We'll go to Brighton by the
afternoon's coach.'

If the application must be made to Mr Dombey at all, which was awful
to think of, Walter felt that he would rather prefer it alone and
unassisted, than backed by the personal influence of Captain Cuttle, to
which he hardly thought Mr Dombey would attach much weight. But as the
Captain appeared to be of quite another opinion, and was bent upon it,
and as his friendship was too zealous and serious to be trifled with
by one so much younger than himself, he forbore to hint the least
objection. Cuttle, therefore, taking a hurried leave of Solomon Gills,
and returning the ready money, the teaspoons, the sugar-tongs, and
the silver watch, to his pocket--with a view, as Walter thought, with
horror, to making a gorgeous impression on Mr Dombey--bore him off to
the coach-office, without a minute's delay, and repeatedly assured
him, on the road, that he would stick by him to the last.

Walter often thinks of the day that he met Florence, and has romantic fantasies of a future with her. Solomon is worried that business at the shop is not going well; one day, the broker Mr. Brogley comes to report that a sizable debt is owed. Walter hurries to Captain Cuttle's home and explains what has happened. Captain Cuttle immediately offers to contribute his savings and few valuable possessions, but these are not nearly enough to pay off the debt. Sol thinks he should sell his stock and close the shop, but Captain Cuttle suggests that Walter ask his employer, Mr. Dombey, for a loan instead. Since Mr. Dombey is currently at Brighton visiting his son, Walter and Captain Cuttle decide to travel there to speak to him