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, with- out a minute's delay,  and
repeatedly assured him, on the road, that he would stick by him to the last.

        CHAPTER 10.
     Containing the Sequel of the Midshipman's Disaster

     Major Bagstock, after long  and frequent observation  of  Paul,  across
Princess's  Place,  through  his  double-barrelled  opera-glass;  and  after
receiving many minute reports, daily, weekly, and monthly, on that  subject,
from the native who kept  himself in constant communication with  Miss Tox's
maid for that purpose; came to the conclusion that Dombey, Sir, was a man to
be known, and that J. B. was the boy to make his acquaintance.
     Miss Tox,  however,  maintaining her reserved behaviour,  and  frigidly
declining to understand the Major whenever he called (which he often did) on
any little  fishing excursion connected with  this project,  the  Major,  in
spite  of  his  constitutional toughness and slyness, was fain to leave  the
accomplishment of his desire in some  measure to chance, 'which,'  as he was
used to observe with chuckles at his club, 'has been fifty to one in  favour
of  Joey B., Sir, ever since  his elder brother  died of Yellow Jack  in the
West Indies.'
     It  was  some  time coming to his aid  in the present instance, but  it
befriended  him at  last.  When  the  dark servant,  with  full particulars,
reported Miss Tox absent on Brighton service, the Major was suddenly touched
with  affectionate  reminiscences of his friend  Bill Bitherstone of Bengal,
who had written to  ask him, if he ever went that way, to bestow a call upon
his only son. But when the same dark servant reported Paul at Mrs Pipchin's,
and the Major, referring to the letter favoured by Master Bitherstone on his
arrival in  England - to which he had never had the least idea of paying any
attention - saw the opening that presented  itself,  he was made so rabid by
the  gout, with  which  he happened  to be  then  laid up,  that  he threw a
footstool at the dark servant in return for  his intelligence,  and swore he
would be the death of the rascal before he had done with him: which the dark
servant was more than half disposed to believe.
     At length  the Major being  released from  his fit,  went  one Saturday
growling down  to  Brighton, with the native behind him; apostrophizing Miss
Tox  all the way, and  gloating  over  the prospect of carrying by storm the
distinguished friend to whom she attached so much mystery,  and for whom she
had deserted him,
     'Would   you,  Ma'am,  would  you!'  said  the  Major,  straining  with
vindictiveness, and swelling every already swollen vein  in his head. 'Would
you give Joey  B. the go-by, Ma'am? Not yet, Ma'am, not yet! Damme, not yet,
Sir. Joe is awake, Ma'am. Bagstock is alive, Sir. J. B. knows a move or two,
Ma'am. Josh  has his weather-eye open, Sir.  You'll  find  him tough, Ma'am.
Tough, Sir, tough is Joseph. Tough, and de-vilish sly!'
     And  very tough indeed Master  Bitherstone found him, when he took that
young  gentleman out for a walk.  But the Major, with his complexion like  a
Stilton cheese, and  his eyes  like  a prawn's, went roving about, perfectly
indifferent  to   Master  Bitherstone's   amusement,   and  dragging  Master
Bitherstone along, while he looked about him high and low, for Mr Dombey and
his children.
     In good time the Major, previously instructed by Mrs Pipchin, spied out
Paul and Florence, and bore down upon them; there  being a stately gentleman
(Mr  Dombey, doubtless) in  their company.  Charging with Master Bitherstone
into  the very  heart of the little squadron, it  fell  out, of course, that
Master  Bitherstone  spoke  to his  fellow-sufferers.  Upon  that the  Major
stopped to notice and admire them;  remembered  with amazement  that  he had
seen and spoken to them at his friend Miss Tox's in Princess's Place; opined
that Paul was a devilish fine fellow, and his own little friend; inquired if
he remembered Joey B. the Major; and finally,  with a sudden recollection of
the conventionalities of life, turned and apologised to Mr Dombey.
     'But my little friend here, Sir,'  said the  Major, 'makes a  boy of me
again:  An  old  soldier,  Sir  - Major Bagstock, at  your service  - is not
ashamed to confess  it.' Here the Major  lifted his hat. 'Damme, Sir,' cried
the Major with sudden warmth, 'I envy you.' Then he recollected himself, and
added, 'Excuse my freedom.'
     Mr Dombey begged he wouldn't mention it.
     'An old campaigner, Sir,'  said the  Major, 'a  smoke-dried, sun-burnt,
used-up,  invalided  old  dog of a  Major,  Sir,  was  not afraid  of  being
condemned  for his whim by a  man  like Mr Dombey.  I  have  the  honour  of
addressing Mr Dombey, I believe?'
     'I  am  the  present  unworthy  representative  of that  name,  Major,'
returned Mr Dombey.
     'By G-, Sir!' said the  Major,  'it's a great  name. It's a name, Sir,'
said the  Major  firmly,  as if  he defied Mr Dombey to contradict  him, and
would feel  it his painful duty to bully him if he did,  'that is known  and
honoured in the British possessions abroad. It is a name, Sir, that a man is
proud to recognise. There is nothing adulatory in Joseph  Bagstock, Sir. His
Royal  Highness the Duke of York observed  on more than one occasion, "there
is  no adulation in Joey. He is a plain old soldier is Joe. He is tough to a
fault  is Joseph:" but it's a great name,  Sir. By  the  Lord, it's  a great
name!' said the Major, solemnly.
     'You  are good  enough  to  rate it higher than it  deserves,  perhaps,
Major,' returned Mr Dombey.
     'No,  Sir,' said  the  Major, in a severe tone. No,  Mr Dombey,  let us
understand  each other. That is not  the Bagstock vein, Sir.  You don't know
Joseph B.  He is a blunt old blade is Josh. No flattery in him, Sir. Nothing
like it.'
     Mr Dombey inclined his head, and said he believed him to be in earnest,
and that his high opinion was gratifying.
     'My little friend here, Sir,' croaked the Major,  looking as amiably as
he  could,  on  Paul,  'will certify  for  Joseph  Bagstock  that  he  is  a
thorough-going, down-right, plain-spoken, old Trump, Sir, and  nothing more.
That boy, Sir,' said the Major in  a lower tone, 'will live in history. That
boy, Sir, is not a common production. Take care of him, Mr Dombey.'
     Mr Dombey seemed to intimate that he would endeavour to do so.
     'Here  is a  boy here,  Sir,' pursued  the Major,  confidentially,  and
giving him a  thrust  with  his cane.  'Son  of  Bitherstone of Bengal. Bill
Bitherstone formerly of  ours. That boy's father and myself, Sir, were sworn
friends. Wherever you  went, Sir, you heard of nothing but  Bill Bitherstone
and Joe Bagstock. Am I  blind to that  boy's  defects? By  no means.  He's a
fool, Sir.'
     Mr Dombey glanced at the libelled  Master Bitherstone,  of whom he knew
at least as  much as the Major did, and  said, in quite a complacent manner,
'Really?'
     'That is  what he is, sir,' said the Major. 'He's a  fool. Joe Bagstock
never minces matters. The son of my old friend Bill Bitherstone,  of Bengal,
is a born fool, Sir.' Here  the Major laughed till  he was almost black. 'My
little friend is destined for a public school,' I' presume, Mr Dombey?' said
the Major when he had recovered.
     'I am  not  quite  decided,'  returned Mr Dombey.  'I think  not. He is
delicate.'
     'If he's  delicate, Sir,'  said the Major, 'you are right. None but the
tough fellows could live through it, Sir, at Sandhurst. We put each other to
the torture there, Sir. We roasted  the new fellows at a slow fire, and hung
'em out of a three pair of stairs window, with their heads downwards. Joseph
Bagstock, Sir,  was  held out of the window by  the heels of his boots,  for
thirteen minutes by the college clock'
     The Major  might have appealed to  his countenance  in corroboration of
this story. It certainly looked as if he had hung out a little too long.
     'But it  made us what we were, Sir,' said the Major, settling his shirt
frill. 'We  were  iron,  Sir, and  it forged  us. Are you remaining here, Mr
Dombey?'
     'I generally come down once a week, Major,' returned that gentleman. 'I
stay at the Bedford.'
     'I  shall  have the honour  of calling at the  Bedford,  Sir, if you'll
permit me,'  said the Major. 'Joey B., Sir, is not in general a calling man,
but  Mr Dombey's  is  not  a common name.  I  am much indebted to  my little
friend, Sir, for the honour of this introduction.'
     Mr Dombey made a very gracious reply; and Major Bagstock, having patted
Paul  on  the head,  and said of Florence that her eyes would play the Devil
with the youngsters before long - 'and the oldsters too, Sir, if you come to
that,' added the Major, chuckling very much - stirred  up Master Bitherstone
with his walking-stick, and departed with that young gentleman, at a kind of
half-trot; rolling his head and coughing with great dignity, as he staggered
away, with his legs very wide asunder.
     In fulfilment of his promise, the Major afterwards called on Mr Dombey;
and Mr  Dombey, having referred to the army list, afterwards  called on  the
Major.  Then the Major  called at Mr Dombey's house in  town;  and came down
again, in the same coach as Mr Dombey. In short, Mr Dombey and the Major got
on uncommonly well together, and uncommonly fast: and  Mr Dombey observed of
the  Major, to his sister, that besides being  quite a military  man he  was
really something more, as he  had a very admirable idea of the importance of
things unconnected with his own profession.
     At length Mr Dombey, bringing  down  Miss Tox and  Mrs Chick to see the
children, and finding the Major again at Brighton,  invited him to dinner at
the Bedford, and complimented Miss Tox highly, beforehand,  on her neighbour
and acquaintance.
     'My dearest Louisa,' said Miss  Tox  to Mrs Chick, when they were alone
together,  on the morning of  the  appointed  day, 'if I should  seem at all
reserved to Major Bagstock, or under any constraint with him, promise me not
to notice it.'
     'My dear  Lucretia,' returned Mrs Chick, 'what mystery  is  involved in
this remarkable request? I must insist upon knowing.'
     'Since you are resolved to extort a confession from  me,  Louisa,' said
Miss Tox instantly, 'I  have  no alternative but to confide to  you that the
Major has been particular.'
     'Particular!' repeated Mrs Chick.
     'The  Major  has  long been very  particular  indeed, my  love, in  his
attentions,' said  Miss Tox, 'occasionally  they have  been  so very marked,
that my position has been one of no common difficulty.'
     'Is he in good circumstances?' inquired Mrs Chick.
     'I have  every reason to believe, my dear -  indeed  I may say I know,'
returned  Miss Tox, 'that he  is wealthy. He  is truly military, and full of
anecdote. I  have  been  informed that  his  valour,  when he was  in active
service, knew no bounds. I  am told that he  did  all sorts of things in the
Peninsula,  with  every description  of fire-arm; and in the  East and  West
Indies, my love, I really couldn't undertake to say what he did not do.'
     'Very creditable to him indeed,' said Mrs Chick, 'extremely so; and you
have given him no encouragement, my dear?'
     'If I were to say, Louisa,'  replied Miss Tox, with every demonstration
of making an effort  that rent her  soul,  'that  I  never encouraged  Major
Bagstock  slightly, I should not do justice to  the friendship which  exists
between you and me. It is, perhaps, hardly in the nature of woman to receive
such attentions as the Major  once  lavished  upon  myself without betraying
some sense of obligation. But  that  is past - long past. Between  the Major
and  me  there  is  now  a  yawning chasm, and  I  will not  feign  to  give
encouragement,  Louisa, where I  cannot give  my heart. My affections,' said
Miss Tox - 'but, Louisa, this is madness!' and departed from the room.
     All this Mrs Chick communicated to her brother before dinner: and it by
no means indisposed Mr Dombey to receive the Major with unwonted cordiality.
The Major,  for his part, was in a state of plethoric satisfaction that knew
no  bounds:  and  he  coughed, and  choked, and chuckled,  and  gasped,  and
swelled, until the waiters seemed positively afraid of him.
     'Your family monopolises Joe's light, Sir,' said the Major, when he had
saluted Miss Tox. 'Joe lives in darkness.  Princess's  Place is changed into
Kamschatka in  the  winter time. There is  no ray of sun, Sir,  for Joey B.,
now.'
     'Miss Tox is good  enough  to take a great  deal  of  interest in Paul,
Major,' returned Mr Dombey on behalf of that blushing virgin.
     'Damme  Sir,'  said the Major,  'I'm  jealous of my little friend.  I'm
pining away  Sir. The Bagstock  breed is degenerating in the forsaken person
of old Joe.' And the Major, becoming bluer and bluer and  puffing his cheeks
further and further over the stiff ridge of his tight cravat, stared at Miss
Tox, until  his  eyes  seemed  as if he were at  that moment  being overdone
before the slow fire at the military college.
     Notwithstanding  the  palpitation  of  the  heart which these allusions
occasioned  her, they  were anything but disagreeable  to Miss Tox,  as they
enabled  her  to  be extremely interesting, and  to manifest  an  occasional
incoherence and distraction which she  was not at all unwilling to  display.
The Major gave her abundant opportunities of exhibiting this  emotion: being
profuse in his complaints, at dinner, of her desertion of him and Princess's
Place: and as he  appeared to derive great enjoyment from making  them, they
all got on very well.
     None the  worse  on  account  of the  Major taking  charge of the whole
conversation, and  showing as great an appetite in that respect as in regard
of the  various dainties  on the table, among which he may be almost said to
have wallowed: greatly to the aggravation of his inflammatory tendencies. Mr
Dombey's habitual silence and reserve yielding  readily to  this usurpation,
the Major felt that  he was  coming out and  shining:  and  in  the flow  of
spirits thus engendered, rang such an infinite number of  new changes on his
own name that  he quite astonished  himself. In  a word,  they were all very
well  pleased. The Major was considered to possess an  inexhaustible fund of
conversation; and when  he took a late farewell, after  a  long  rubber,  Mr
Dombey  again  complimented the  blushing  Miss  Tox on  her  neighbour  and
acquaintance.
     But all the  way home to his own  hotel, the  Major incessantly said to
himself, and of himself, 'Sly, Sir - sly, Sir - de-vil-ish sly!' And when he
got there, sat down in a chair, and fell into a silent fit of laughter, with
which he was sometimes  seized, and which was  always particularly awful. It
held him  so long on this occasion that the dark servant, who stood watching
him at a distance, but dared not for his life approach, twice or thrice gave
him over for lost. His whole form, but especially his face and head, dilated
beyond all  former experience; and presented to the dark man's view, nothing
but a heaving mass of indigo. At length he burst  into a violent paroxysm of
coughing, and when that was a little better burst into such ejaculations  as
the following:
     'Would  you,  Ma'am, would  you?  Mrs Dombey,  eh, Ma'am? I think  not,
Ma'am. Not while Joe B.  can put a spoke in your wheel,  Ma'am. J. B.'s even
with  you  now, Ma'am.  He isn't  altogether  bowled  out, yet,  Sir,  isn't
Bagstock. She's deep, Sir, deep, but Josh is deeper. Wide awake is old Joe -
broad awake, and staring,  Sir!' There was  no doubt  of this last assertion
being true, and to  a very fearful extent; as it continued to  be during the
greater part  of  that night,  which the  Major  chiefly  passed in  similar
exclamations,  diversified with  fits  of coughing and choking that startled
the whole house.
     It  was  on  the day  after this  occasion  (being Sunday)  when, as Mr
Dombey, Mrs  Chick, and Miss Tox were sitting at breakfast, still eulogising
the Major, Florence came running in: her face suffused with a bright colour,
and her eyes sparkling joyfully: and cried,
     'Papa! Papa! Here's Walter! and he won't come in.'
     'Who?' cried Mr Dombey. 'What does she mean? What is this?'
     'Walter, Papa!' said Florence  timidly;  sensible of having  approached
the presence with too much familiarity. 'Who found me when I was lost.'
     'Does  she mean  young Gay,  Louisa?' inquired Mr Dombey, knitting  his
brows. 'Really, this child's manners have become very boisterous. She cannot
mean young Gay, I think. See what it is, will you?'
     Mrs Chick hurried into the passage, and returned  with  the information
that it  was  young Gay,  accompanied by a very strange-looking person;  and
that young Gay said he would not take the liberty of  coming in, hearing  Mr
Dombey was at breakfast, but would wait until Mr  Dombey should signify that
he might approach.
     'Tell the  boy to come in now,' said Mr Dombey. 'Now, Gay,  what is the
matter? Who sent you down here? Was there nobody else to come?'
     'I beg  your  pardon,  Sir,' returned  Walter. 'I have not been sent. I
have been  so bold as to come on my own account, which I hope you'll  pardon
when I mention the cause.
     But  Mr  Dombey,  without  attending  to  what  he  said,  was  looking
impatiently on either side of him (as  if  he were  a pillar in his  way) at
some object behind.
     'What's that?' said Mr Dombey. 'Who is that? I think you have made some
mistake in the door, Sir.'
     'Oh,  I'm  very  sorry  to  intrude  with anyone,  Sir,'  cried Walter,
hastily: 'but this is - this is Captain Cuttle, Sir.'
     'Wal'r, my lad,' observed the Captain in a deep voice: 'stand by!'
     At the same time the Captain, coming  a little  further in, brought out
his wide suit of blue, his  conspicuous shirt-collar, and his knobby nose in
full relief, and stood bowing to Mr  Dombey, and waving his hook politely to
the  ladies, with  the  hard glazed hat in his one  hand, and a  red equator
round his head which it had newly imprinted there.
     Mr  Dombey regarded this phenomenon with amazement and indignation, and
seemed by his looks  to appeal to Mrs Chick and Miss Tox  against it. Little
Paul, who had come in after Florence, backed towards Miss Tox as the Captain
waved his book, and stood on the defensive.
     'Now, Gay,' said Mr Dombey. 'What have you got to say to me?'
     Again the Captain observed,  as a general  opening of the  conversation
that could not fail to propitiate all parties, 'Wal'r, standby!'
     'I  am afraid,  Sir,' began Walter, trembling, and looking down  at the
ground, 'that I take a very great liberty in  coming - indeed,  I  am sure I
do.  I should hardly have had the courage to ask to see you, Sir, even after
coming down, I am afraid, if I had not overtaken Miss Dombey, and - '
     'Well!' said  Mr  Dombey,  following his  eyes  as  he  glanced at  the
attentive Florence, and frowning unconsciously as she  encouraged him with a
smile. 'Go on, if you please.'
     'Ay, ay,'  observed the Captain, considering it  incumbent on him, as a
point of good breeding, to support Mr Dombey. 'Well said! Go on, Wal'r.'
     Captain Cuttle ought to have been withered by the look which  Mr Dombey
bestowed upon him  in acknowledgment of his patronage. But quite innocent of
this, he  closed  one  eye  in reply,  and gave Mr Dombey to understand,  by
certain significant motions of his hook, that Walter was a little bashful at
first, and might be expected to come out shortly.
     'It is entirely  a private  and personal  matter, that  has brought  me
here, Sir,' continued Walter, faltering, 'and Captain Cuttle
     'Here!' interposed the Captain, as an  assurance  that  he was at hand,
and might be relied upon.
     'Who is a very old friend of my poor Uncle's, and a most excellent man,
Sir,' pursued Walter, raising  his eyes  with  a look  of  entreaty  in  the
Captain's  behalf, 'was so good as to  offer to come with  me, which I could
hardly refuse.'
     'No, no, no;'  observed the Captain  complacently.  'Of course not.  No
call for refusing. Go on, Wal'r.'
     'And therefore, Sir,' said Walter,  venturing to meet Mr Dombey's  eye,
and proceeding  with better courage in the very desperation of the case, now
that there was no avoiding it, 'therefore I have come, with him, Sir, to say
that  my poor  old  Uncle is  in  very great affliction and  distress. That,
through the  gradual loss of  his business,  and  not being able  to make  a
payment, the  apprehension of which  has weighed very heavily upon his mind,
months and  months, as indeed I know, Sir, he has an execution in his house,
and is in danger of losing all he has,  and  breaking his heart. And that if
you  would,  in your  kindness,  and  in  your  old knowledge of  him  as  a
respectable  man, do anything to help  him out of his  difficulty,  Sir,  we
never could thank you enough for it.'
     Walter's  eyes filled with tears  as  he  spoke;  and so  did those  of
Florence.  Her  father  saw them glistening, though  he appeared to look  at
Walter only.
     'It is a  very large sum, Sir,'  said Walter. 'More than three  hundred
pounds. My Uncle is quite beaten down by his misfortune, it lies so heavy on
him; and is quite unable to do anything for his own relief. He doesn't  even
know  yet, that I have come to speak to you. You would wish me to say, Sir,'
added Walter, after  a  moment's hesitation, 'exactly what  it  is I want. I
really don't know, Sir. There is my Uncle's stock, on which I believe  I may
say, confidently, there are no  other demands, and there is  Captain Cuttle,
who  would wish  to be  security too.  I -  I  hardly like to mention,' said
Walter, 'such earnings as mine; but if you would allow  them -  accumulate -
payment -  advance - Uncle  -  frugal, honourable,  old man.' Walter trailed
off, through these broken  sentences, into  silence: and stood with downcast
head, before his employer.
     Considering this  a favourable moment for the display of the valuables,
Captain  Cuttle  advanced  to the  table; and  clearing  a  space among  the
breakfast-cups at  Mr  Dombey's elbow,  produced the silver watch, the ready
money, the teaspoons, and the sugar-tongs;  and  piling them up into  a heap
that  they might  look  as precious  as possible, delivered himself of these
words:
     'Half a  loaf's better than  no  bread, and the same  remark holds good
with crumbs. There's a  few. Annuity of one hundred pound premium also ready
to be made over. If  there is a man chock full of science in the world, it's
old  Sol  Gills. If  there is  a lad of  promise -  one flowing,' added  the
Captain,  in one of his happy quotations, 'with milk  and  honey -  it's his
nevy!'
     The Captain then withdrew to his former place, where he stood arranging
his scattered locks with the air of a man  who had given the finishing touch
to a difficult performance.
     When Walter  ceased to speak, Mr Dombey's eyes were attracted to little
Paul, who, seeing his sister hanging down her head  and silently  weeping in
her  commiseration for the  distress she  had heard described, went over  to
her, and  tried to comfort  her: looking at Walter and  his father as he did
so, with a  very expressive face. After the momentary distraction of Captain
Cuttle's address, which he regarded with lofty indifference, Mr Dombey again
turned his eyes upon his son, and sat steadily regarding the child, for some
moments, in silence.
     'What was  this debt contracted for?' asked Mr Dombey, at length.  'Who
is the creditor?'
     'He  don't  know,'  replied the Captain,  putting his  hand on Walter's
shoulder.  'I do. It came of helping a man that's dead now, and that's  cost
my friend Gills  many a hundred pound  already. More particulars in private,
if agreeable.'
     'People who have enough to do to hold  their  own way,' said Mr Dombey,
unobservant of  the Captain's  mysterious signs  behind  Walter,  and  still
looking  at  his son,  'had better be content with their own obligations and
difficulties, and not increase  them by engaging for other men. It is an act
of  dishonesty  and  presumption,  too,'  said  Mr Dombey,  sternly;  'great
presumption; for the wealthy could do no more. Paul, come here!'
     The child obeyed: and Mr Dombey took him on his knee.
     'If you had money now - ' said Mr Dombey. 'Look at me!'
     Paul, whose eyes had wandered to his sister, and to  Walter, looked his
father in the face.
     'If you had money now,' said Mr Dombey; 'as much money as young Gay has
talked about; what would you do?'
     'Give it to his old Uncle,' returned Paul.
     'Lend it to his old Uncle, eh?' retorted Mr Dombey. 'Well! When you are
old  enough,  you know,  you  will  share  my  money,  and we  shall  use it
together.'
     'Dombey and Son,' interrupted Paul, who had been tutored early  in  the
phrase.
     'Dombey  and Son,'  repeated his father. 'Would you like to begin to be
Dombey and Son, now, and lend this money to young Gay's Uncle?'
     'Oh! if you please, Papa!' said Paul: 'and so would Florence.'
     'Girls,' said Mr Dombey, 'have nothing to do with Dombey and Son. Would
you like it?'
     'Yes, Papa, yes!'
     'Then  you shall do it,' returned  his father.  'And you see, Paul,' he
added, dropping his voice, 'how powerful money  is, and how  anxious  people
are to get  it. Young Gay comes all this way to beg for money, and  you, who
are so grand  and great,  having got it, are  going to let him have it, as a
great favour and obligation.'
     Paul  turned  up the old face for a  moment, in which there was a sharp
understanding of the reference conveyed  in these words: but it was a  young
and childish  face immediately afterwards,  when  he  slipped down from  his
father's  knee, and  ran to tell Florence not  to  cry any more, for  he was
going to let young Gay have the money.
     Mr Dombey then turned to a side-table,  and wrote a note and sealed it.
During the  interval, Paul and  Florence whispered  to  Walter,  and Captain
Cuttle  beamed on the three,  with such aspiring and ineffably  presumptuous
thoughts as Mr Dombey never could have believed in. The note being finished,
Mr Dombey turned round to his former place, and held it out to Walter.
     'Give that,' he said, 'the first thing to-morrow morning, to Mr Carker.
He will immediately take care that one of my people releases your Uncle from
his  present  position,  by  paying  the amount  at  issue;  and  that  such
arrangements  are made for  its repayment as  may be  consistent  with  your
Uncle's circumstances. You will consider that this is done for you by Master
Paul.'
     Walter,  in  the emotion of holding in his hand the  means of releasing
his good Uncle from his trouble, would have endeavoured to express something
of his gratitude and joy. But Mr Dombey stopped him short.
     'You will consider that  it is  done,' he repeated, 'by Master  Paul. I
have  explained that  to  him, and he understands it. I wish  no more to  be
said.'
     As  he  motioned towards the door,  Walter  could only bow his head and
retire. Miss Tox, seeing  that the Captain  appeared  about to do  the same,
interposed.
     'My  dear Sir,' she said, addressing  Mr Dombey,  at  whose munificence
both she  and Mrs  Chick  were shedding tears copiously; 'I  think  you have
overlooked something. Pardon me, Mr Dombey, I think, in the nobility of your
character, and its exalted scope, you have omitted a matter of detail.'
     'Indeed, Miss Tox!' said Mr Dombey.
     'The gentleman with the -  Instrument,'  pursued Miss  Tox, glancing at
Captain Cuttle, 'has left upon the table, at your elbow - '
     'Good Heaven!' said Mr  Dombey, sweeping  the  Captain's property  from
him,  as if it were  so much crumb  indeed. 'Take  these things  away.  I am
obliged  to  you,  Miss  Tox;  it  is like  your  usual discretion. Have the
goodness to take these things away, Sir!'
     Captain Cuttle felt he  had no alternative but to comply. But he was so
much  struck by the  magnanimity of  Mr Dombey, in refusing  treasures lying
heaped  up  to his  hand, that  when  he  had  deposited  the  teaspoons and
sugar-tongs in one pocket, and  the  ready money in another, and had lowered
the great watch down slowly into its proper vault, he could not refrain from
seizing that gentleman's right hand in his  own  solitary left, and while he
held it open with his powerful fingers, bringing the hook down upon its palm
in a  transport of  admiration. At this touch of warm feeling and cold iron,
Mr Dombey shivered all over.
     Captain Cuttle then  kissed his hook to the ladies  several times, with
great  elegance and gallantry; and having taken  a particular leave  of Paul
and Florence, accompanied Walter out of the room. Florence was running after
them in the  earnestness of her heart, to send some message to old Sol, when
Mr Dombey called her back, and bade her stay where she was.
     'Will  you never  be  a Dombey,  my dear  child!' said Mrs  Chick, with
pathetic reproachfulness.
     'Dear aunt,'  said Florence. 'Don't be angry  with me. I am so thankful
to Papa!'
     She would have run and thrown her arms about his neck if she had dared;
but as she did not dare, she glanced with  thankful eyes  towards him, as he
sat musing; sometimes bestowing  an uneasy glance on her, but, for the  most
part, watching Paul, who walked about the room with the new-blown dignity of
having let young Gay have the money.
     And young Gay - Walter- what of him?
     He  was  overjoyed to purge  the  old  man's  hearth from bailiffs  and
brokers, and  to  hurry back to  his  Uncle with the  good  tidings.  He was
overjoyed to  have it all arranged and settled next day before noon; and  to
sit down  at  evening in  the little back  parlour  with old Sol and Captain
Cuttle;  and to  see the Instrument-maker already reviving, and hopeful  for
the future, and feeling  that the wooden Midshipman was his own  again.  But
without  the  least impeachment of  his gratitude to Mr  Dombey, it must  be
confessed that  Walter was  humbled and  cast  down. It is  when our budding
hopes  are nipped beyond  recovery by some rough wind, that we are the  most
disposed to picture to ourselves what flowers they might have borne, if they
had  flourished; and now, when Walter found  himself cut off from that great
Dombey height, by the  depth of a new and terrible tumble, and felt that all
his old wild fancies had been scattered to the winds in  the fall, he  began
to suspect that they might have led him  on to harmless visions  of aspiring
to Florence in the remote distance of time.
     The Captain viewed the subject in quite a different  light. He appeared
to  entertain a belief  that the interview  at  which he had assisted was so
very satisfactory and encouraging, as to be only a step or two removed  from
a regular betrothal of Florence to Walter; and that the late transaction had
immensely  forwarded, if  not  thoroughly  established,  the  Whittingtonian
hopes.  Stimulated by this conviction, and by the improvement in the spirits
of his old friend, and by his  own consequent gaiety,  he even attempted, in
favouring them  with the ballad of  'Lovely Peg' for the third  time  in one
evening, to make an extemporaneous substitution of the name 'Florence;'  but
finding this difficult, on account of the word Peg invariably rhyming to leg
(in which personal beauty  the original was described as having excelled all
competitors),  he hit upon  the happy thought of  changing  it to  Fle-e-eg;
which he accordingly did, with an archness almost supernatural, and  a voice
quite vociferous, notwithstanding that  the time  was close at band when  he
must seek the abode of the dreadful Mrs MacStinger.
     That same evening the Major  was diffuse at his club, on the subject of
his friend Dombey in the City. 'Damme, Sir,' said the Major, 'he's a prince,
is my friend Dombey in the City. I tell you what, Sir. If you had a few more
men among you  like old Joe Bagstock and my friend Dombey in the  City, Sir,
you'd do!'

        CHAPTER 11.
     Paul's Introduction to a New Scene

     Mrs Pipchin's constitution was made of such hard metal, in spite of its
liability to  the  fleshly weaknesses of  standing in  need of repose  after
chops, and  of requiring to be  coaxed  to sleep by  the soporific agency of
sweet-breads,  that it utterly set at naught the  predictions of Mrs Wickam,
and showed no symptoms of decline. Yet,  as Paul's rapt interest in  the old
lady continued unbated, Mrs Wickam would not budge an inch from the position
she had taken up. Fortifying and entrenching herself on the strong ground of
her Uncle's  Betsey Jane,  she  advised Miss Berry, as  a friend, to prepare
herself for the worst; and forewarned her that her  aunt might, at any time,
be expected to go off suddenly, like a powder-mill.
     'I hope, Miss Berry,'  Mrs Wickam would observe, 'that you'll come into
whatever little property there may be to leave.  You deserve it, I am  sure,
for yours is a trying life. Though there don't seem much worth coming into -
you'll excuse my being so open - in this dismal den.'
     Poor  Berry took it all in  good part,  and  drudged and slaved away as
usual; perfectly  convinced that Mrs Pipchin was one of the most meritorious
persons in the world, and making every day innumerable sacrifices of herself
upon the altar of that noble old  woman.  But all these immolations of Berry
were somehow carried  to the  credit of Mrs Pipchin by Mrs Pipchin's friends
and  admirers;  and  were  made to  harmonise  with,  and  carry  out,  that
melancholy fact of the deceased Mr Pipchin having  broken his  heart  in the
Peruvian mines.
     For example,  there  was an honest  grocer  and  general  dealer in the
retail  line of  business,  between whom  and Mrs Pipchin there was  a small
memorandum book, with  a  greasy  red cover,  perpetually  in question,  and
concerning  which divers secret councils  and  conferences were  continually
being held between the parties to that  register, on the mat in the passage,
and with closed doors in the parlour. Nor were there wanting dark hints from
Master Bitherstone (whose temper had been made revengeful by the solar heats
of India  acting on his blood), of balances unsettled, and  of a failure, on
one occasion within his  memory, in  the supply  of moist sugar at tea-time.
This grocer being a bachelor and  not  a man who looked upon the surface for
beauty, had  once made honourable offers  for  the hand of  Berry, which Mrs
Pipchin had, with contumely and scorn, rejected. Everybody said how laudable
this was in Mrs Pipchin, relict of a man who had died of the Peruvian mines;
and what a staunch, high,  independent  spirit the old lady had. But  nobody
said anything about poor Berry, who cried for six weeks (being soundly rated
by  her good aunt  all  the  time), and  lapsed  into  a state  of  hopeless
spinsterhood.
     'Berry's very fond of you, ain't she?' Paul once asked Mrs Pipchin when
they were sitting by the fire with the cat.
     'Yes,' said Mrs Pipchin.
     'Why?' asked Paul.
     'Why!'  returned  the disconcerted  old  lady. 'How  can  you  ask such
things, Sir! why are you fond of your sister Florence?'
     'Because she's very good,' said Paul. 'There's nobody like Florence.'
     'Well!' retorted Mrs Pipchin, shortly,  'and there's  nobody like me, I
suppose.'
     'Ain't there really though?' asked Paul, leaning forward in  his chair,
and looking at her very hard.
     'No,' said the old lady.
     'I  am  glad of that,' observed Paul,  rubbing his  hands thoughtfully.
'That's a very good thing.'
     Mrs  Pipchin didn't dare to  ask him  why, lest she should receive some
perfectly  annihilating  answer.  But  as  a  compensation  to  her  wounded
feelings, she  harassed  Master Bitherstone to  that extent  until bed-time,
that he began that very night to make arrangements for an overland return to
India, by secreting  from his supper  a quarter of  a round  of  bread and a
fragment  of moist Dutch cheese, as the beginning of a stock of provision to
support him on the voyage.
     Mrs Pipchin had kept watch and ward over little Paul and his sister for
nearly twelve months. They had been home twice, but only for a few days; and
had been  constant  in their weekly  visits to  Mr Dombey at the  hotel.  By
little and little  Paul had grown stronger, and had  become able to dispense
with his carriage;  though he  still looked  thin  and  delicate; and  still
remained the  same old,  quiet,  dreamy child  that  he had been  when first
consigned to Mrs  Pipchin's  care.  One Saturday afternoon,  at  dusk, great
consternation  was occasioned in the Castle by the unlooked-for announcement
of Mr Dombey as a visitor  to Mrs Pipchin. The population of the parlour was
immediately  swept upstairs as on the  wings of a whirlwind, and  after much
slamming of  bedroom doors, and trampling overhead,  and some knocking about
of Master Bitherstone by Mrs Pipchin, as a relief to the perturbation of her
spirits, the  black bombazeen garments  of the  worthy old lady darkened the
audience-chamber where  Mr Dombey was contemplating the vacant arm-chair  of
his son and heir.
     'Mrs Pipchin,' said Mr Dombey, 'How do you do?'
     'Thank you, Sir,' said Mrs Pipchin, 'I am pretty well, considering.'
     Mrs Pipchin always used that form of  words. It  meant, considering her
virtues, sacrifices, and so forth.
     'I  can't expect, Sir, to  be very well,' said  Mrs Pipchin,  taking  a
chair  and fetching her  breath; 'but such  health as I have, I  am grateful
for.'
     Mr Dombey  inclined his  head with the satisfied  air of a patron,  who
felt that this was  the sort of thing for  which he  paid so much a quarter.
After a moment's silence he went on to say:
     'Mrs  Pipchin, I have taken the  liberty of calling, to consult you  in
reference to my  son. I have had it in my mind to do so  for some time past;
but  have deferred it from time to time,  in order that his health  might be
thoroughly  re-established.  You  have no  misgivings on that  subject,  Mrs
Pipchin?'
     'Brighton has proved very beneficial, Sir,' returned Mrs Pipchin. 'Very
beneficial, indeed.'
     'I purpose,' said Mr Dombey, 'his remaining at Brighton.'
     Mrs Pipchin rubbed her hands, and bent her grey eyes on the fire.
     'But,' pursued Mr Dombey, stretching  out his forefinger, 'but possibly
that he should now make a change, and lead a different kind of life here. In
short, Mrs  Pipchin, that is the object of my visit. My  son is  getting on,
Mrs Pipchin. Really, he is getting on.'
     There was  something  melancholy  in the  triumphant air  with which Mr
Dombey said this. It showed how  long Paul's childish life  had been to him,
and  how  his hopes were set upon a later  stage of his  existence. Pity may
appear a strange word to connect with anyone so haughty and so cold, and yet
he seemed a worthy subject for it at that moment.
     'Six years old!'  said Mr Dombey, settling  his neckcloth -  perhaps to
hide an irrepressible smile that rather seemed to strike upon the surface of
his  face and glance away,  as finding no resting-place, than to  play there
for an instant. 'Dear me, six will be changed to  sixteen,  before  we  have
time to look about us.'
     'Ten  years,'  croaked  the  unsympathetic  Pipchin,   with  a   frosty
glistening  of her hard grey eye, and a dreary shaking of her bent head, 'is
a long time.'
     'It  depends on circumstances, returned Mr  Dombey; 'at all events, Mrs
Pipchin, my son is six years old, and there is no doubt, I fear, that in his
studies  he  is  behind  many children of his age  - or  his youth,' said Mr
Dombey, quickly  answering what he mistrusted  was a  shrewd twinkle of  the
frosty eye, 'his youth  is a  more appropriate expression. Now, Mrs Pipchin,
instead  of  being behind  his peers,  my son ought  to be before them;  far
before  them. There is  an eminence ready for him  to mount upon.  There  is
nothing of chance or doubt  in the course before my son. His way in life was
clear and prepared, and marked out before  he existed. The education of such
a young gentleman must not  be  delayed. It must not  be left imperfect.  It
must be very steadily and seriously undertaken, Mrs Pipchin.'
     'Well, Sir,' said Mrs Pipchin, 'I can say nothing to the contrary.'
     'I was quite sure, Mrs Pipchin,' returned Mr Dombey, approvingly, 'that
a person of your good sense could not, and would not.'
     'There is  a great deal of nonsense  - and worse  - talked  about young
people not being pressed too  hard at  first, and being tempted on,  and all
the rest of it, Sir,' said Mrs Pipchin, impatiently rubbing her hooked nose.
'It never was thought of in my time, and it has no business to be thought of
now. My opinion is "keep 'em at it".'
     'My good  madam,'  returned  Mr Dombey, 'you  have  not  acquired  your
reputation  undeservedly; and  I  beg you to believe, Mrs Pipchin, that I am
more than satisfied with your excellent system of management, and shall have
the greatest pleasure in commending it whenever my poor commendation - '  Mr
Dombey's loftiness when he affected  to disparage his own importance, passed
all  bounds  -  'can  be  of any service. I  have  been  thinking  of Doctor
Blimber's, Mrs Pipchin.'
     'My neighbour,  Sir?' said Mrs Pipchin. 'I believe  the Doctor's  is an
excellent establishment.  I've heard that it's very strictly  conducted, and
there is nothing but learning going on from morning to night.'
     'And it's very expensive,' added Mr Dombey.
     'And it's very expensive,  Sir,' returned Mrs  Pipchin, catching at the
fact, as if in omitting that, she had omitted one of its leading merits.
     'I have had some communication  with the  Doctor, Mrs Pipchin,' said Mr
Dombey, hitching his  chair anxiously a  little nearer to  the fire, 'and he
does  not  consider  Paul  at all  too young for his  purpose. He  mentioned
several  instances of boys in  Greek  at about the  same age. If  I have any
little uneasiness in my own  mind,  Mrs  Pipchin,  on  the  subject  of this
change,  it  is not  on that  head.  My  son not having known  a mother  has
gradually concentrated  much -  too much - of his childish affection on  his
sister. Whether their separation - ' Mr Dombey said no more, but sat silent.
     'Hoity-toity!'  exclaimed  Mrs Pipchin, shaking out her black bombazeen
skirts, and plucking up all the ogress within her. 'If she don't like it, Mr
Dombey, she must be taught to lump it.' The good lady apologised immediately
afterwards for using so common a figure of speech, but said (and truly) that
that was the way she reasoned with 'em.
     Mr Dombey waited until Mrs Pipchin  had  done bridling and shaking  her
head,  and frowning down a legion of Bitherstones and Pankeys; and then said
quietly, but correctively, 'He, my good madam, he.'
     Mrs Pipchin's system would have applied very much the same mode of cure
to any  uneasiness on the part  of Paul, too; but  as the  hard grey eye was
sharp  enough  to see that the  recipe, however Mr Dombey  might  admit  its
efficacy in the case  of the  daughter, was  not a  sovereign remedy for the
son,  she argued the point; and contended that change, and new society,  and
the  different  form of  life he  would lead at Doctor  Blimber's,  and  the
studies  he  would  have  to  master,  would   very  soon  prove  sufficient
alienations. As this chimed in with Mr Dombey's own hope and belief, it gave
that gentleman a still higher opinion of Mrs Pipchin's understanding; and as
Mrs Pipchin, at the same time, bewailed  the loss of  her dear little friend
(which  was  not an  overwhelming shock to her, as she had long expected it,
and had not looked, in the beginning, for his remaining with her longer than
three   months),  he  formed  an  equally  good  opinion  of  Mrs  Pipchin's
disinterestedness. It  was  plain  that  he  had  given  the subject anxious
consideration, for he  had formed a plan, which he announced to  the ogress,
of sending Paul to the Doctor's as a weekly boarder for the first half year,
during  which time Florence  would  remain at  the  Castle,  that  she might
receive her brother there, on Saturdays. This would wean him by  degrees, Mr
Dombey said;  possibly with a recollection of his not having been  weaned by
degrees on a former occasion.
     Mr  Dombey  finished  the  interview  by  expressing his hope that  Mrs
Pipchin would still remain  in office as general superintendent and overseer
of  his  son, pending his studies at Brighton;  and having  kissed Paul, and
shaken hands with Florence, and  beheld Master Bitherstone in  his collar of
state, and made Miss Pankey cry by  patting her on the head (in which region
she was uncommonly tender, on account of a habit Mrs Pipchin had of sounding
it with her  knuckles, like  a cask), he withdrew  to his  hotel and dinner:
resolved that Paul, now that he was getting  so old and well, should begin a
vigorous course of education  forthwith, to qualify  him for the position in
which  he was  to shine;  and that Doctor  Blimber should  take him in  hand
immediately.
     Whenever  a young  gentleman  was taken  in hand by  Doctor Blimber, he
might  consider himself  sure of  a  pretty  tight squeeze.  The Doctor only
undertook the charge of ten  young gentlemen, but  he  had, always ready,  a
supply of learning for a hundred, on the lowest estimate; and it was at once
the business and delight of his life to gorge the unhappy ten with it.
     In fact, Doctor Blimber's establishment was a great hot-house, in which
there was a forcing apparatus incessantly at work. All the  boys blew before
their time. Mental green-peas  were produced at  Christmas, and intellectual
asparagus all the year round. Mathematical gooseberries (very sour ones too)
were  common at untimely seasons, and from  mere  sprouts  of bushes,  under
Doctor Blimber's cultivation. Every description of Greek and Latin vegetable
was got  off the driest  twigs of boys,  under  the frostiest circumstances.
Nature was of  no consequence at all. No matter  what a young  gentleman was
intended to bear, Doctor Blimber made him bear to pattern, somehow or other.
     This was all very pleasant and ingenious, but the system of forcing was
attended  with its usual disadvantages. There was not the right  taste about
the  premature productions, and they didn't  keep well.  Moreover, one young
gentleman, with  a swollen nose and an excessively large head (the oldest of
the ten who had 'gone  through'  everything), suddenly left  off blowing one
day, and remained in the establishment a mere stalk. And people did say that
the Doctor had rather  overdone it  with young Toots, and that when he began
to have whiskers he left off having brains.
     There young Toots was, at any rate; possessed of the gruffest of voices
and the  shrillest of minds; sticking  ornamental pins  into  his shirt, and
keeping a ring in  his  waistcoat  pocket to put  on  his  little  finger by
stealth, when  the pupils  went out walking;  constantly falling in  love by
sight with nurserymaids, who had no idea of  his existence; and  looking  at
the  gas-lighted world  over the little iron  bars  in the  left-hand corner
window  of the  front three pairs of stairs, after bed-time,  like a greatly
overgrown cherub who had sat up aloft much too long.
     The Doctor was a portly gentleman in  a suit of black, with strings  at
his knees, and stockings below  them. He had a bald head, highly polished; a
deep  voice; and a chin  so  very double, that  it was  a wonder how he ever
managed  to shave  into the creases. He had likewise  a pair  of little eyes
that were always  half shut  up, and a mouth that  was  always half expanded
into a grin, as  if  he had, that moment,  posed a  boy, and were waiting to
convict him from his own lips. Insomuch, that when the Doctor put his  right
hand into  the breast of his coat, and with his other hand behind him, and a
fly perceptible wag of his head, made the commonest observation to a nervous
stranger, it was like a sentiment from the sphynx, and settled his business.
     The Doctor's  was a  mighty fine house,  fronting the sea. Not a joyful
style of house within, but quite the contrary.  Sad-coloured curtains, whose
proportions  were  spare  and lean, hid  themselves despondently  behind the
windows. The tables and chairs were put away in rows, like figures in a sum;
fires were so  rarely lighted in the rooms of ceremony, that they felt  like
wells, and a visitor represented the bucket; the dining-room seemed the last
place in the world where any eating or drinking was likely  to  occur; there
was no sound through all the  house but  the ticking of a great clock in the
hall, which made itself audible  in the very  garrets;  and sometimes a dull
cooing of  young gentlemen  at  their  lessons,  like  the murmurings  of an
assemblage of melancholy pigeons.
     Miss Blimber,  too,  although  a slim  and graceful maid,  did  no soft
violence to the gravity of the house. There was no light nonsense about Miss
Blimber. She kept her hair short and crisp, and wore spectacles. She was dry
and sandy with working in the  graves of deceased  languages.  None of  your
live languages for Miss Blimber. They must be  dead -  stone dead - and then
Miss Blimber dug them up like a Ghoul.
     Mrs Blimber, her Mama,  was not learned  herself,  but she pretended to
be, and  that did  quite as  well. She said at  evening parties, that if she
could have known Cicero, she  thought she could have died  contented. It was
the steady  joy of her  life  to  see  the  Doctor's young  gentlemen go out
walking,  unlike  all  other  young   gentlemen,  in  the  largest  possible
shirt-collars,  and the stiffest possible cravats. It was  so classical, she
said.
     As  to Mr  Feeder, B.A.,  Doctor Blimber's assistant, he was a kind  of
human barrel-organ, with  a little list of tunes at which he was continually
working, over and over  again,  without any variation. He  might  have  been
fitted up  with a change of barrels, perhaps, in early life, if his  destiny
had been favourable; but it had  not been;  and he had only one, with which,
in a monotonous round, it was his occupation  to bewilder the young ideas of
Doctor  Blimber's young gentlemen. The young gentlemen were prematurely full
of  carking anxieties.  They knew no rest  from the pursuit of stony-hearted
verbs, savage  noun-substantives, inflexible  syntactic passages, and ghosts
of  exercises that  appeared  to  them in their dreams.  Under  the  forcing
system, a young gentleman usually took leave of his  spirits in three weeks.
He had all the cares of the  world on his head in three months. He conceived
bitter sentiments  against his parents or guardians in four; he  was  an old
misanthrope, in  five;  envied Curtius that blessed refuge in  the earth, in
six; and  at the end of the first twelvemonth had arrived at the conclusion,
from which he never afterwards departed, that all  the fancies of the poets,
and  lessons of  the sages, were a mere collection of words and grammar, and
had no other meaning in the world.
     But he  went on blow, blow, blowing, in the Doctor's hothouse,  all the
time;  and the Doctor's glory  and reputation were  great, when he took  his
wintry growth home to his relations and friends.
     Upon  the Doctor's  door-steps  one day, Paul  stood with a  fluttering
heart, and with his small right hand in  his father's.  His other  hand  was
locked in that of Florence. How tight the tiny pressure of that one; and how
loose and cold the other!
     Mrs Pipchin hovered behind the victim, with her sable plumage  and  her
hooked beak, like a bird of ill-omen. She was out of breath - for Mr Dombey,
full of great thoughts, had walked  fast -  and she croaked hoarsely as  she
waited for the opening of the door.
     'Now, Paul,' said Mr Dombey, exultingly. 'This is  the way indeed to be
Dombey and Son, and have money. You are almost a man already.'
     'Almost,' returned the child.
     Even  his childish agitation could not  master  the sly and quaint  yet
touching look, with which he accompanied the reply.
     It brought a vague expression of dissatisfaction into Mr Dombey's face;
but the door being opened, it was quickly gone
     'Doctor Blimber is at home, I believe?' said Mr Dombey.
     The man said yes; and as they passed in, looked at Paul as if he were a
little mouse, and the house were a trap. He was  a weak-eyed young man, with
the first faint streaks or early  dawn of a grin  on his countenance. It was
mere  imbecility;  but  Mrs Pipchin  took  it  into  her  head  that  it was
impudence, and made a snap at him directly.
     'How  dare you  laugh behind  the gentleman's back?' said  Mrs Pipchin.
'And what do you take me for?'
     'I  ain't  a laughing at  nobody,  and I'm sure  I don't  take  you for
nothing, Ma'am,' returned the young man, in consternation.
     'A pack of idle dogs!' said Mrs  Pipchin, 'only fit to be turnspits. Go
and tell your master that Mr Dombey's here, or it'll be worse for you!'
     The weak-eyed young man went, very meekly, to discharge himself of this
commission; and soon came back to invite them to the Doctor's study.
     'You're  laughing again,  Sir,' said Mrs Pipchin,  when it  came to her
turn, bringing up the rear, to pass him in the hall.
     'I ain't,' returned the young man, grievously  oppressed.  'I never see
such a thing as this!'
     'What  is the matter, Mrs  Pipchin?'  said Mr  Dombey,  looking  round.
'Softly! Pray!'
     Mrs Pipchin, in her deference,  merely muttered at the young man as she
passed on, and said, 'Oh! he was a precious fellow' - leaving the young man,
who was all meekness and incapacity, affected even to tears by the incident.
But  Mrs  Pipchin  had a way  of falling  foul of  all meek people; and  her
friends said who could wonder at it, after the Peruvian mines!
     The Doctor was sitting in his  portentous  study, with a globe  at each
knee,  books  all round  him,  Homer  over  the  door,  and  Minerva  on the
mantel-shelf. 'And how do you do, Sir?' he said to Mr Dombey, 'and how is my
little  friend?'  Grave as  an  organ was the Doctor's speech; and  when  he
ceased, the great clock in  the  hall seemed (to  Paul at least) to take him
up, and to go on saying,  'how, is, my, lit, tle, friend?  how, is, my, lit,
tle, friend?' over and over and over again.
     The  little  friend  being something too small to be seen  at all  from
where  the  Doctor sat, over the books on his table, the Doctor made several
futile  attempts  to get  a  view of him round  the  legs;  which  Mr Dombey
perceiving, relieved the Doctor from his embarrassment by taking  Paul up in
his arms, and sitting him on  another little table, over against the Doctor,
in the middle of the room.
     'Ha!' said the Doctor,  leaning  back in his chair with his hand in his
breast. 'Now I see my little friend. How do you do, my little friend?'
     The clock in the hall wouldn't subscribe to this alteration in the form
of words, but continued  to repeat how, is, my, lit, tle, friend?  how,  is,
my, lit, tle, friend?'
     'Very well, I thank you, Sir,' returned Paul, answering the clock quite
as much as the Doctor.
     'Ha!' said Doctor Blimber. 'Shall we make a man of him?'
     'Do you hear, Paul?' added Mr Dombey; Paul being silent.
     'Shall we make a man of him?' repeated the Doctor.
     'I had rather be a child,' replied Paul.
     'Indeed!' said the Doctor. 'Why?'
     The child sat on the table looking at him, with a curious expression of
suppressed emotion in his face, and beating one  hand proudly on his knee as
if he had the rising tears beneath it, and  crushed them. But his other hand
strayed a little way the  while, a  little farther  - farther from him yet -
until it lighted on  the  neck of Florence. 'This is why,' it seemed to say,
and  then  the steady look  was  broken up and  gone; the  working  lip  was
loosened; and the tears came streaming forth.
     'Mrs  Pipchin,'  said his father, in a querulous  manner, 'I  am really
very sorry to see this.'
     'Come away from him, do, Miss Dombey,' quoth the matron.
     'Never mind,' said the Doctor,  blandly nodding  his  head, to keep Mrs
Pipchin  back.  'Never  mind;   we  shall  substitute  new  cares   and  new
impressions, Mr Dombey, very shortly. You would still wish  my little friend
to acquire - '
     'Everything, if you please, Doctor,' returned Mr Dombey, firmly.
     'Yes,' said the Doctor, who, with  his  half-shut  eyes,  and his usual
smile, seemed to survey Paul with the sort of interest that might  attach to
some choice little animal he was going to stuff. 'Yes, exactly. Ha! We shall
impart a  great variety of information to our little  friend, and bring  him
quickly forward,  I daresay.  I  daresay. Quite a virgin soil, I believe you
said, Mr Dombey?'
     'Except some ordinary preparation at home, and from this lady,' replied
Mr Dombey, introducing Mrs Pipchin, who instantly communicated a rigidity to
her  whole  muscular system, and snorted defiance beforehand,  in  case  the
Doctor should disparage  her;  'except so  far, Paul  has,  as yet,  applied
himself to no studies at all.'
     Doctor  Blimber  inclined   his  head,  in  gentle  tolerance  of  such
insignificant poaching as Mrs Pipchin's, and said he was glad to hear it. It
was much more satisfactory, he observed, rubbing his hands, to begin  at the
foundation. And again he leered at Paul, as if he would have liked to tackle
him with the Greek alphabet, on the spot.
     'That  circumstance,  indeed,  Doctor  Blimber,'  pursued  Mr   Dombey,
glancing at  his  little  son, 'and the  interview  I  have already  had the
pleasure  of  holding  with  you,  renders  any  further   explanation,  and
consequently,  any further intrusion on  your valuable time, so unnecessary,
that - '
     'Now, Miss Dombey!' said the acid Pipchin.
     'Permit me,' said  the  Doctor, 'one moment.  Allow me  to present  Mrs
Blimber  and my daughter; who  will be associated  with the domestic life of
our young Pilgrim to Parnassus Mrs Blimber,'  for the  lady, who had perhaps
been in waiting, opportunely  entered,  followed by her daughter,  that fair
Sexton  in  spectacles,  'Mr  Dombey.  My daughter Cornelia,  Mr  Dombey. Mr
Dombey, my love,' pursued the Doctor, turning to his wife,  'is so confiding
as to - do you see our little friend?'
     Mrs Blimber, in an excess  of politeness, of  which  Mr  Dombey was the
object, apparently  did not, for she was  backing against the little friend,
and very much  endangering his position on the table. But, on this hint, she
turned  to  admire  his classical  and intellectual lineaments, and  turning
again to Mr Dombey, said, with a sigh, that she envied his dear son.
     'Like a  bee,  Sir,' said Mrs  Blimber,  with uplifted eyes,  'about to
plunge  into a garden  of  the choicest flowers, and sip  the sweets for the
first time Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Terence, Plautus, Cicero.  What a world  of
honey  have  we  here. It may  appear remarkable, Mr Dombey, in one who is a
wife - the wife of such a husband - '
     'Hush, hush,' said Doctor Blimber. 'Fie for shame.'
     'Mr  Dombey will forgive the  partiality  of a wife,' said Mrs Blimber,
with an engaging smile.
     Mr Dombey answered 'Not  at  all:' applying those  words, it  is  to be
presumed, to the partiality, and not to the forgiveness.
     'And it may seem remarkable in one  who is a mother also,' resumed  Mrs
Blimber.
     'And such a mother,' observed Mr Dombey, bowing with some confused idea
of being complimentary to Cornelia.
     'But  really,' pursued Mrs  Blimber,  'I  think  if I could  have known
Cicero, and  been his  friend,  and  talked  with him in  his  retirement at
Tusculum (beau-ti-ful Tusculum!), I could have died contented.'
     A  learned  enthusiasm is  so  very  contagious,  that  Mr Dombey  half
believed this was exactly his case; and even Mrs Pipchin, who was not, as we
have seen, of an accommodating  disposition  generally,  gave utterance to a
little  sound between  a groan and a  sigh, as if she  would  have said that
nobody but Cicero could have proved a lasting consolation under that failure
of  the Peruvian MInes, but that he indeed would have  been a very Davy-lamp
of refuge.
     Cornelia looked at Mr  Dombey through her spectacles,  as if  she would
have liked  to  crack  a  few  quotations  with  him from  the authority  in
question. But this design, if she entertained it, was frustrated by a  knock
at the room-door.
     'Who  is  that?'  said  the Doctor. 'Oh!  Come in,  Toots; come  in. Mr
Dombey, Sir.' Toots bowed. 'Quite a coincidence!' said Doctor Blimber. 'Here
we have the beginning and the end. Alpha and Omega Our head boy, Mr Dombey.'
     The Doctor might  have called him their  head and shoulders boy, for he
was at least that much taller than  any of the rest. He blushed very much at
finding himself among strangers, and chuckled aloud.
     'An  addition  to our  little  Portico,  Toots,'  said the  Doctor; 'Mr
Dombey's son.'
     Young  Toots blushed  again; and finding,  from a solemn  silence which
prevailed, that he was expected  to say something,  said to  Paul, 'How  are
you?' in a voice so  deep, and  a manner  so sheepish, that if  a  lamb  had
roared it couldn't have been more surprising.
     'Ask Mr Feeder, if  you please,  Toots,' said the Doctor, 'to prepare a
few introductory volumes for Mr Dombey's son, and to allot  him a convenient
seat for study. My dear, I believe Mr Dombey has not seen the dormitories.'
     'If Mr Dombey will  walk upstairs,' said Mrs  Blimber, 'I shall be more
than proud to show him the dominions of the drowsy god.'
     With that, Mrs Blimber, who was a  lady of  great  suavity, and a  wiry
figure, and who wore  a cap  composed  of sky-blue  materials, pied upstairs
with  Mr Dombey  and Cornelia; Mrs Pipchin following, and looking out  sharp
for her enemy the footman.
     While they were gone, Paul sat upon the table,  holding Florence by the
hand,  and glancing timidly from the Doctor round  and round the room, while
the Doctor, leaning back in his chair, with his hand in his breast as usual,
held a  book  from him at  arm's length, and read. There was  something very
awful in this manner of reading. It  was such  a  determined, unimpassioned,
inflexible,  cold-blooded  way  of  going  to  work. It  left  the  Doctor's
countenance exposed to view; and  when the Doctor smiled suspiciously at his
author, or  knit his brows, or shook his  head and made wry faces at him, as
much as to say, 'Don't tell me, Sir; I know better,' it was terrific.
     Toots, too, had no  business  to be outside  the  door,  ostentatiously
examining  the wheels in  his watch, and counting his half-crowns. But  that
didn't  last  long; for Doctor Blimber, happening to change  the position of
his tight plump legs, as if he were going to get up, Toots swiftly vanished,
and appeared no more.
     Mr Dombey and his conductress were soon heard coming downstairs  again,
talking all the way; and presently they re-entered the Doctor's study.
     'I hope, Mr Dombey,' said the Doctor,  laying down  his book, 'that the
arrangements meet your approval.'
     'They are excellent, Sir,' said Mr Dombey.
     'Very fair,  indeed,' said  Mrs Pipchin, in a low voice; never disposed
to give too much encouragement.
     'Mrs  Pipchin,'  said  Mr  Dombey,  wheeling  round,  'will, with  your
permission, Doctor and Mrs Blimber, visit Paul now and then.'
     'Whenever Mrs Pipchin pleases,' observed the Doctor.
     'Always happy to see her,' said Mrs Blimber.
     'I think,'  said Mr  Dombey, 'I have given all the trouble I  need, and
may take my leave. Paul, my child,' he went close to him, as he sat upon the
table. 'Good-bye.'
     'Good-bye, Papa.'
     The limp  and  careless little hand  that Mr  Dombey took  in his,  was
singularly out of keeping with the wistful face. But he had no part  in  its
sorrowful expression. It was not addressed to him. No, no. To Florence - all
to Florence.
     If Mr  Dombey in his insolence of wealth, had ever  made an enemy, hard
to appease and cruelly vindictive in his hate, even such an enemy might have
received  the pang that wrung his proud heart then, as compensation  for his
injury.
     He bent down, over his boy, and kissed him. If his sight were dimmed as
he did so, by something that for  a moment blurred the little face, and made
it indistinct to him, his mental vision may have been, for that short  time,
the clearer perhaps.
     'I shall see you soon, Paul. You are free on Saturdays and Sundays, you
know.'
     'Yes,  Papa,' returned Paul: looking  at his  sister. 'On Saturdays and
Sundays.'
     'And you'll try and learn a great deal here, and be a clever man,' said
Mr Dombey; 'won't you?'
     'I'll try,' returned the child, wearily.
     'And you'll soon be grown up now!' said Mr Dombey.
     'Oh! very soon!' replied the child. Once more the old, old look  passed
rapidly across  his features like a strange  light. It fell on Mrs  Pipchin,
and extinguished  itself in her  black dress.  That excellent ogress stepped
forward to take leave and  to  bear  off Florence, which  she  had long been
thirsting to do. The move on her part roused  Mr  Dombey,  whose  eyes  were
fixed on Paul. After patting him on  the head, and  pressing  his small hand
again, he took leave of Doctor Blimber, Mrs Blimber, and Miss Blimber,  with
his usual polite frigidity, and walked out of the study.
     Despite his  entreaty  that they would  not think  of  stirring, Doctor
Blimber, Mrs Blimber, and  Miss Blimber all pressed forward to attend him to
the hall; and thus Mrs  Pipchin got  into a state of entanglement  with Miss
Blimber and the Doctor, and was  crowded  out of the  study before she could
clutch Florence. To which happy accident  Paul stood afterwards indebted for
the  dear remembrance,  that Florence ran back to throw  her arms round  his
neck, and that  hers was  the last face  in the doorway: turned  towards him
with a  smile of encouragement, the brighter  for the tears through which it
beamed.
     It made his childish bosom heave and swell  when it was gone; and  sent
the globes, the books, blind Homer and Minerva, swimming round the room. But
they stopped, all  of a sudden; and then he heard the loud clock in the hall
still gravely inquiring  'how,  is, my, lit, tle, friend? how, is,  my, lit,
tle, friend?' as it had done before.
     He sat, with  folded hands, upon his pedestal, silently  listening. But
he might have answered 'weary,  weary!  very lonely,  very sad!'  And there,
with  an aching void in his young heart, and all outside so cold, and  bare,
and  strange,  Paul  sat  as  if  he had  taken  life  unfurnished, and  the
upholsterer were never coming.

        CHAPTER 12.
     Paul's Education

     After  the  lapse of  some minutes,  which appeared an immense time  to
little Paul Dombey on the table, Doctor Blimber came back. The Doctor's walk
was  stately,  and  calculated  to impress  the juvenile  mind  with  solemn
feelings.  It was a sort of march; but  when the Doctor  put out  his  right
foot, he gravely  turned upon  his axis, with a semi-circular sweep  towards
the left; and when he  put out his left foot, he turned in  the same  manner
towards the right. So that he seemed, at every stride he took, to look about
him as though he were saying, 'Can anybody have the goodness to indicate any
subject, in any direction, on which I am uninformed? I rather think not'
     Mrs Blimber and Miss Blimber came back in the Doctor's company; and the
Doctor,  lifting his new  pupil  off  the table, delivered him over to  Miss
Blimber.
     'Cornelia,' said  the Doctor, 'Dombey  will be your  charge  at  first.
Bring him on, Cornelia, bring him on.'
     Miss Blimber received her young ward from the Doctor's hands; and Paul,
feeling that the spectacles were surveying him, cast down his eyes.
     'How old are you, Dombey?' said Miss Blimber.
     'Six,'  answered  Paul,  wondering, as  he stole a glance at the  young
lady, why her hair didn't grow  long like Florence's, and why she was like a
boy.
     'How  much  do  you know  of  your  Latin Grammar, Dombey?'  said  Miss
Blimber.
     'None of  it,' answered Paul.  Feeling that the answer was  a  shock to
Miss  Blimber's sensibility, he  looked  up  at the three  faces  that  were
looking down at him, and said:
     'I  have'n't been well. I  have been  a  weak child. I couldn't learn a
Latin Grammar  when I was  out, every day, with old Glubb. I wish you'd tell
old Glubb to come and see me, if you please.'
     'What  a  dreadfully low  name' said  Mrs Blimber.  'Unclassical  to  a
degree! Who is the monster, child?'
     'What monster?' inquired Paul.
     'Glubb,' said Mrs Blimber, with a great disrelish.
     'He's no more a monster than you are,' returned Paul.
     'What!' cried the Doctor, in a terrible voice. 'Ay, ay, ay? Aha! What's
that?'
     Paul  was  dreadfully frightened; but  still  he made a  stand  for the
absent Glubb, though he did it trembling.
     'He's a very nice old man, Ma'am,' he said. 'He used  to draw my couch.
He knows all about the deep sea,  and the fish that are in it, and the great
monsters  that come  and lie  on rocks in the sun,  and dive into the  water
again when they're  startled, blowing and  splashing  so, that they  can  be
heard for miles.  There are some  creatures, said  Paul,  warming  with  his
subject, 'I  don't know how many yards  long, and I forget their  names, but
Florence knows, that  pretend to be in  distress; and when  a man  goes near
them, out of compassion, they open their great jaws, and attack him. But all
he has got to do,'  said Paul, boldly tendering this information to the very
Doctor himself,  'is to keep on  turning as he runs away, and then, as  they
turn  slowly, because they are so  long,  and can't  bend, he's sure to beat
them. And though old Glubb don't know why the sea should make me think of my
Mama that's dead, or what it is that it is always saying - always saying! he
knows a great deal about it. And I wish,' the child concluded, with a sudden
falling  of his countenance, and failing in his animation, as he looked like
one forlorn, upon the three strange faces, 'that  you'd let  old  Glubb come
here to see me, for I know him very well, and he knows me.
     'Ha!' said the Doctor,  shaking his head; 'this is  bad, but study will
do much.'
     Mrs Blimber opined,  with  something like  a  shiver, that  he  was  an
unaccountable  child; and, allowing for the difference of visage, looked  at
him pretty much as Mrs Pipchin had been used to do.
     'Take him round the house, Cornelia,' said the Doctor, 'and familiarise
him with his new sphere. Go with that young lady, Dombey.'
     Dombey obeyed; giving his hand to the abstruse Cornelia, and looking at
her  sideways,  with  timid  curiosity, as they went  away together. For her
spectacles,  by  reason  of  the glistening  of the  glasses,  made  her  so
mysterious, that he didn't  know where she  was looking,  and was not indeed
quite sure that she had any eyes at all behind them.
     Cornelia took him first  to  the schoolroom,  which was situated at the
back of the hall, and was approached through two baize doors, which deadened
and  muffled the  young  gentlemen's voices. Here,  there  were eight  young
gentlemen  in various  stages of mental prostration, all very hard at  work,
and very grave indeed. Toots, as an  old hand,  had a desk to himself in one
corner: and a  magnificent man,  of immense age, he looked, in  Paul's young
eyes, behind it.
     Mr Feeder,  B.A., who sat at  another little desk, had  his Virgil stop
on,  and was slowly  grinding  that  tune  to  four  young gentlemen. Of the
remaining four, two, who  grasped their foreheads convulsively, were engaged
in solving mathematical problems; one  with his  face like  a dirty  window,
from much  crying, was endeavouring to flounder through a hopeless number of
lines before dinner; and  one sat  looking at his task in stony stupefaction
and  despair  - which it  seemed had been his condition ever since breakfast
time.
     The appearance of  a new  boy  did not create the sensation that  might
have been  expected. Mr Feeder, B.A. (who was in the  habit of  shaving  his
head for coolness, and  had  nothing but little bristles on it), gave  him a
bony  hand, and told him he was glad to see him - which Paul would have been
very  glad  to  have  told him,  if  he  could have  done  so with the least
sincerity.  Then Paul, instructed  by Cornelia, shook  hands  with  the four
young gentlemen  at Mr Feeder's desk; then with  the two  young gentlemen at
work on the problems, who were very feverish; then with  the young gentleman
at work against time, who was very inky; and lastly with the young gentleman
in a state of stupefaction, who was flabby and quite cold.
     Paul  having  been  already  introduced  to  Toots,  that pupil  merely
chuckled and breathed hard, as his custom was, and pursued the occupation in
which he was engaged. It  was not a severe one; for on account of his having
'gone through' so much (in more senses than one), and also of his having, as
before hinted, left  off  blowing in  his  prime, Toots  now had licence  to
pursue his own course of study: which  was chiefly to write  long letters to
himself  from  persons  of distinction, adds 'P.  Toots,  Esquire, Brighton,
Sussex,' and to preserve them in his desk with great care.
     These ceremonies passed,  Cornelia led Paul  upstairs to the top of the
house; which was rather a slow journey, on account of Paul being obliged  to
land both feet on every stair, before he mounted another.  But  they reached
their  journey's end at last; and there, in  a front room, looking  over the
wild sea, Cornelia showed him a  nice little bed  with white hangings, close
to the window,  on which there was already  beautifully written on a card in
round  text - down strokes very  thick, and up  strokes very fine -  DOMBEY;
while two  other little bedsteads  in the same  room were announced, through
like means, as respectively appertaining unto BRIGGS and TOZER.
     Just as they got downstairs again into the hall, Paul saw the weak-eyed
young man who had given that mortal offence to Mrs Pipchin, suddenly seize a
very large drumstick,  and fly at a gong that was hanging up, as  if  he had
gone mad, or  wanted  vengeance.  Instead of receiving warning,  however, or
being instantly taken into custody, the  young man left off unchecked, after
having  made  a dreadful  noise. Then Cornelia Blimber  said to Dombey  that
dinner would be ready in a quarter of an hour, and perhaps  he had better go
into the schoolroom among his 'friends.'
     So Dombey, deferentially passing  the great clock  which was  still  as
anxious as ever to know how  he found himself, opened  the schoolroom door a
very little way, and strayed in like a lost boy: shutting  it after him with
some difficulty.  His  friends were all dispersed about the room  except the
stony  friend, who remained immoveable. Mr Feeder was  stretching himself in
his grey gown, as  if, regardless of expense, he  were resolved to  pull the
sleeves off.
     'Heigh ho hum!' cried Mr Feeder, shaking himself like a cart-horse. 'Oh
dear me, dear me! Ya-a-a-ah!'
     Paul was quite  alarmed by  Mr Feeder's yawning; it was  done on such a
great  scale, and he was so terribly  in  earnest.  All the boys too  (Toots
excepted) seemed knocked up, and were getting ready for  dinner - some newly
tying their  neckcloths,  which were very  stiff  indeed; and others washing
their hands or brushing  their hair,  in an  adjoining ante-chamber -  as if
they didn't think they should enjoy it at all.
     Young Toots who was ready beforehand, and had therefore  nothing to do,
and had leisure to bestow upon Paul, said, with heavy good nature:
     'Sit down, Dombey.'
     'Thank you, Sir,' said Paul.
     His endeavouring to hoist  himself on  to a very high  window-seat, and
his slipping down again, appeared to prepare Toots's mind  for the reception
of a discovery.
     'You're a very small chap;' said Mr Toots.
     'Yes, Sir, I'm small,' returned Paul. 'Thank you, Sir.'
     For Toots had lifted him into the seat, and done it kindly too.
     'Who's your tailor?'  inquired Toots, after  looking  at  him  for some
moments.
     'It's a woman that has made my clothes as yet,' said Paul. 'My sister's
dressmaker.'
     'My tailor's Burgess and Co.,' said Toots. 'Fash'nable. But very dear.'
     Paul had wit enough to shake his head, as if he  would have said it was
easy to see that; and indeed he thought so.
     'Your father's regularly rich, ain't he?' inquired Mr Toots.
     'Yes, Sir,' said Paul. 'He's Dombey and Son.'
     'And which?' demanded Toots.
     'And Son, Sir,' replied Paul.
     Mr Toots  made one or two attempts, in  a low voice, to fix the Firm in
his mind; but  not quite succeeding, said he would  get Paul to mention  the
name again  to-morrow  morning, as  it was rather important. And  indeed  he
purposed nothing less than writing himself a private and confidential letter
from Dombey and Son immediately.
     By this time the other pupils (always excepting the stony boy) gathered
round. They were polite, but pale; and spoke low; and they were so depressed
in their spirits, that  in comparison with the general tone of that company,
Master Bitherstone was a perfect Miller, or complete Jest Book.' And yet  he
had a sense of injury upon him, too, had Bitherstone.
     'You sleep in  my room,  don't  you?' asked  a solemn  young gentleman,
whose shirt-collar curled up the lobes of his ears.
     'Master Briggs?' inquired Paul.
     'Tozer,' said the young gentleman.
     Paul  answered yes; and  Tozer pointing  out the stony pupil, said that
was Briggs. Paul had already felt certain that it must  be either Briggs  or
Tozer, though he didn't know why.
     'Is yours a strong constitution?' inquired Tozer.
     Paul  said he  thought  not.  Tozer replied  that he thought  not also,
judging from Paul's looks,  and that it was a pity, for it  need be. He then
asked Paul  if he were  going  to begin with  Cornelia; and  on Paul  saying
'yes,' all the young gentlemen (Briggs excepted) gave a low groan.
     It was  drowned in  the  tintinnabulation  of the gong,  which sounding
again  with great fury,  there was  a general  move towards the dining-room;
still  excepting Briggs the  stony boy, who remained where he was, and as he
was;  and  on its way  to whom  Paul presently encountered a round of bread,
genteelly  served  on  a plate  and  napkin, and  with a silver  fork  lying
crosswise on the top of it.
     Doctor Blimber was already in his place in the dining-room, at  the top
of the table, with  Miss Blimber and Mrs  Blimber on either  side of him. Mr
Feeder in a black  coat  was  at  the bottom. Paul's chair was next to  Miss
Blimber; but it being found, when he  sat in it,  that his eyebrows were not
much above the level of the table-cloth, some books were brought in from the
Doctor's study, on which he  was elevated, and on which  he always sat  from
that  time  - carrying  them  in and out himself on  after occasions, like a
little elephant and castle.'
     Grace having been said by the Doctor, dinner began. There was some nice
soup; also roast meat, boiled meat, vegetables, pie, and cheese. Every young
gentleman had a massive silver fork, and a  napkin; and all the arrangements
were stately and handsome. In particular, there was a butler in a  blue coat
and bright  buttons, who gave quite a winey  flavour to the table  beer;  he
poured it out so superbly.
     Nobody spoke, unless spoken to, except Doctor Blimber, Mrs Blimber, and
Miss Blimber, who conversed occasionally. Whenever a young gentleman was not
actually  engaged  with his  knife  and  fork  or spoon, his  eye,  with  an
irresistible attraction,  sought the eye of Doctor Blimber,  Mrs Blimber, or
Miss  Blimber,  and  modestly rested  there. Toots  appeared to  be the only
exception  to this rule. He sat next Mr Feeder on Paul's  side of the table,
and  frequently  looked  behind and before  the  intervening boys to catch a
glimpse of Paul.
     Only once  during dinner was  there any conversation that  included the
young  gentlemen. It happened at  the epoch  of the cheese, when the Doctor,
having taken a glass of port wine, and hemmed twice or thrice, said:
     'It is remarkable, Mr Feeder, that the Romans - '
     At the mention of this terrible people, their implacable enemies, every
young gentleman fastened his gaze upon the Doctor, with an assumption of the
deepest  interest.  One  of the number who happened to  be drinking, and who
caught the Doctor's eye glaring at him through the side of his tumbler, left
off so hastily that he was  convulsed for some  moments,  and in  the sequel
ruined Doctor Blimber's point.
     'It is remarkable, Mr Feeder,' said the Doctor, beginning again slowly,
'that the Romans, in  those gorgeous and profuse  entertainments of which we
read in the days of the Emperors,  when luxury had attained a height unknown
before  or  since,  and  when  whole  provinces  were ravaged  to supply the
splendid means of one Imperial Banquet - '
     Here  the offender, who had been swelling and straining, and waiting in
vain for a full stop, broke out violently.
     'Johnson,'  said Mr Feeder,  in a  low reproachful  voice,  'take  some
water.'
     The Doctor,  looking  very stern,  made a pause  until  the  water  was
brought, and then resumed:
     'And when, Mr Feeder - '
     But Mr Feeder, who saw that Johnson  must break out again, and who knew
that the Doctor would never  come to a period  before  the  young  gentlemen
until  he  had  finished all he  meant  to say, couldn't  keep  his eye  off
Johnson;  and thus was caught in the fact  of not looking at the Doctor, who
consequently stopped.
     'I beg your pardon,  Sir,' said  Mr  Feeder,  reddening.  'I  beg  your
pardon, Doctor Blimber.'
     'And when,' said the Doctor, raising his voice, 'when, Sir, as we read,
and have no reason to doubt - incredible as it may appear to the vulgar - of
our time -  the brother of Vitellius prepared for him a feast, in which were
served, of fish, two thousand dishes - '
     'Take some water, Johnson - dishes, Sir,' said Mr Feeder.
     'Of various sorts of fowl, five thousand dishes.'
     'Or try a crust of bread,' said Mr Feeder.
     'And one dish,' pursued Doctor Blimber, raising his voice still  higher
as he looked all round the table, 'called, from its enormous dimensions, the
Shield of Minerva, and made, among  other costly ingredients, of  the brains
of pheasants - '
     'Ow, ow, ow!' (from Johnson.)
     'Woodcocks - '
     'Ow, ow, ow!'
     'The sounds of the fish called scari - '
     'You'll  burst  some vessel in  your head,' said Mr  Feeder.  'You  had
better let it come.'
     'And  the  spawn of  the  lamprey, brought  from the  Carpathian  Sea,'
pursued  the  Doctor,  in his  severest  voice;  'when  we  read  of  costly
entertainments such as these, and still remember, that we have a Titus - '
     'What would be your mother's feelings if you died of apoplexy!' said Mr
Feeder.
     'A Domitian - '
     'And you're blue, you know,' said Mr Feeder.
     'A Nero, a Tiberius, a Caligula, a Heliogabalus, and many more, pursued
the Doctor; 'it is, Mr Feeder  - if you are doing me the honour to attend  -
remarkable; VERY remarkable, Sir - '
     But Johnson,  unable to suppress it any longer, burst  at  that  moment
into such an  overwhelming fit of coughing, that although both his immediate
neighbours thumped him on the back, and Mr Feeder  himself  held a  glass of
water  to his lips, and the  butler walked  him up  and  down  several times
between his own chair and the sideboard,  like a sentry, it  was a full five
minutes  before  he  was  moderately composed.  Then  there was  a  profound
silence.
     'Gentlemen,'  said  Doctor  Blimber, 'rise for  Grace!  Cornelia,  lift
Dombey down' - nothing of  whom but his scalp was accordingly seen above the
tablecloth. 'Johnson  will repeat  to me  tomorrow morning before breakfast,
without book, and from the Greek Testament, the first chapter of the Epistle
of  Saint  Paul to the Ephesians. We will resume our  studies, Mr Feeder, in
half-an-hour.'
     The young gentlemen bowed and withdrew. Mr Feeder did  likewise. During
the half-hour, the young  gentlemen,  broken into pairs, loitered arm-in-arm
up and  down a small  piece  of ground behind  the house,  or endeavoured to
kindle a spark of animation in the breast of Briggs. But nothing happened so
vulgar as play. Punctually at the  appointed time, the gong was sounded, and
the studies, under the joint auspices of Doctor Blimber  and Mr Feeder, were
resumed.
     As the Olympic  game of lounging up  and down had been cut shorter than
usual that day, on Johnson's account, they all went  out for  a  walk before
tea. Even Briggs (though he hadn't begun yet) partook  of  this dissipation;
in  the enjoyment  of  which  he  looked