"WELL!" SAID MR. DOMBEY, AFTER LOOKING AT HIM ATTENTIVELY AND WITH NO GREAT FAVOR, AS HE STOOD GAZING ROUND THE ROOM (PRINCIPALLY ROUND THE CEILING), AND STILL DRAWING HIS HAND ACROSS AND ACROSS HIS MOUTH; "YOU HEARD WHAT I SAID TO YOUR WIFE, JUST NOW."

tween Mrs. Chick and Richards, with the assistance of Miss Tox; and Richards being with much ceremony invested with the Dombey baby, as if it were an Order, resigned her own with many tears and kisses to Jemima. Glasses of wine were then produced to sustain the drooping spirits of the family.

"You'll take a glass yourself, sir, won't you?" said Miss Tox, as Toodle appeared.

"Thankee, mum," said Toodle, "since you are suppressing.'

"And you're very glad to leave your dear good wife in such a comfortable home, ain't you, sir?" said Miss Tox, nodding and winking at him stealthily.

"No, mum," said Toodle. "Here's wishing of her back agin."

Polly cried more than ever at this. So Mrs. Chick, who had her matronly apprehensions that this indulgence in grief might be prejudicial to the little Dombey ("acid, indeed," she whispered Miss Tox), hastened to the rescue.

"Your little child will thrive charmingly with your sister Jemima, Richards," said Mrs. Chick; "and you have only to make an effort this is a world of effort, you know, Richards-to be very happy indeed. You have been already measured for your mourning, haven't you, Richards?

"Ye-es, ma'am," sobbed Polly.

"And it'll fit beautifully, I know," said Mrs. Chick, "for the same young person has made me many dresses. The very best materials too!"

"Lor, you'll be so smart," said Miss Tox, "that your husband won't know you; will you, sir?"

"I should know her," said Toodle, gruffly, "anyhows and anywheres."

Toodle was evidently not to be bought over.

"As to living, Richards, you know," pursued Mrs. Chick, "why the very best of everything will be at your disposal. You will order your little dinner every day; and anything you take a fancy to, I'm sure will be as readily provided as if you were a lady."

"Yes, to be sure!" said Miss Tox, keeping up the ball with great sympathy. "And as to porter!-quite unlimited, will it not, Louisa?"

"Oh, certainly!" returned Mrs. Chick, in the same

tone. "With a little abstinence, you know, my dear, in point of vegetables."

"And pickles, perhaps," suggested Mrs. Tox.

"With such exceptions," said Louisa, "she'll consult her choice entirely, and be under no restraint at all, my love."

"And then, of course, you know," said Miss Tox, "however fond she is of her own dear little child-and I'm sure, Louisa, you don't blame her for being fond of it?"

"Oh no!” cried Mrs. Chick, benignantly.

"Still," resumed Miss Tox," she naturally must be interested in her young charge, and must consider it a privilege to see a little cherub closely connected with the superior classes gradually unfolding itself from day to day at one common fountain. Is it not so, Louisa?" "Most undoubtedly!" said Mrs. Chick. "You see, my love, she's already quite contented and comfortable, and means to say good by to her sister Jemima and her little pets, and her good honest husband, with a light heart and a smile; don't she, my dear!"

"Oh yes!" cried Miss Tox. "To be sure she does!" Notwithstanding which, however, poor Polly embraced them all round in great distress, and finally ran away to avoid any more particular leave-taking between herself and the children. But the stratagem hardly succeeded as well as it deserved; for the smallest boy but one divining her intent, immediately began swarming up-stairs after her-if that word of doubtful etymology be admissible-on his arms and legs; while the eldest (known in the family by the name of Biler, in remembrance of the steam-engine) beat a demoniacal tattoo with his boots, expressive of grief; in which he was joined by the rest of the family.

A quantity of oranges and halfpence, thrust indiscriminately on each young Toodle, checked the first violence of their regret, and the family were speedily transported to their own home, by means of the hackney-coach kept in waiting for that purpose. The children, under the guardianship of Jemima, blocked up the window, and dropped out oranges and halfpence all the way along. Mr. Toodle himself preferred to ride. behind among the spikes, as being the mode of conveyance to which he was best accustomed.

CHAPTER III.

IN WHICH MR. DOMBEY, AS A MAN AND A FATHER, IS SEEN AT THE HEAD OF THE HOME DEPARTMENT.

THE funeral of the deceased lady having been "performed" to the entire satisfaction of the undertaker, as well as of the neighborhood at large, which is generally disposed to be captious on such a point, and is prone to take offence at any omissions or shortcomings in the ceremonies, the various members of Mr. Dombey's household subsided into their several places in the domestic system. That small world, like the great one out of doors, had the capacity of easily forgetting its dead; and when the cook had said she was a quiet-tempered lady, and the housekeeper had said it was the common lot, and the butler had said who'd have thought it, and the housemaid had said she couldn't hardly believe it, and the footman had said it seemed exactly like a dream, they had quite worn the subject out, and began to think their mourning was wearing rusty too.

On Richards, who was established up-stairs in a state of honorable captivity, the dawn of her new life seemed to break cold and grey. Mr. Dombey's house was a large one, on the shady side of a tall, dark, dreadfully genteel street in the region between Portland-place and Bryanstone-square. It was a corner house, with great wide areas containing cellars frowned upon by barred windows, and leered at by crooked-eyed doors leading to dust-bins. It was a house of dismal state, with a circular back to it, containing a whole suite of drawingrooms looking upon a gravelled yard, where two gaunt trees, with blackened trunks and branches, rattled rather than rustled, their leaves were so smoke-dried. The summer sun was never on the street but in the morning about breakfast-time, when it came with the water-carts and the old clothes-men, and the people with geraniums, and the umbrella-mender, and the man who trilled the little bell of the Dutch clock as he went along. It was soon gone again to return no more that day; and the bands of music and the straggling Punch's shows going after it, left it a prey to the most dismal of organs, and white mice; with now and then a porcu

pine, to vary the entertainments; until the butlers, whose families were dining out, began to stand at the house doors in the twilight, and the lamp-lighter made his nightly failure in attempting to brighten up the street. with gas.

It was as blank a house inside as outside. When the funeral was over, Mr. Dombey ordered the furniture to be covered up-perhaps to preserve it for the son with whom his plans were all associated-and the rooms to be ungarnished, saving such as he retained for himself on the ground floor. Accordingly, mysterious shapes were made of tables and chairs, heaped together in the middle of rooms, and covered over with great winding sheets. Bell-handles, window-blinds, and lookingglasses, being papered up in journals, daily and weekly, obtruded fragmentary accounts of deaths and dreadful murders. Every chandelier or lustre, muffled in holland, looked like a monstrous tear depending from the ceiling's eye. Odors, as from vaults and damp places, came out of the chimneys. The dead and buried lady was awful in a picture-frame of ghastly bandages. Every gust of wind that rose brought, eddying round the corner from the neighboring mews, some fragments of the straw that had been strewn before the house when she was ill, mildewed remains of which were still cleaving to the neighborhood; and these, being always drawn by some invisible attraction to the threshold of the dirty house to let immediately opposite, addressed a dismal eloquence to Mr. Dombey's windows.

The apartments which Mr. Dombey reserved for his own inhabiting were attainable from the hall, and consisted of a sitting-room; a library, which was in fact a dressing-room, so that the smell of hot-pressed paper, vellum, morocco, and Russia leather, contended in it with the smell of divers pairs of boots; and a kind of conservatory or little glass breakfast-room beyond, commanding a prospect of the trees before mentioned, and, generally speaking, of a few prowling cats. These three rooms opened upon one another. In the morning, when Mr. Dombey was at his breakfast in one or other of the two first mentioned of them, as well as in the afternoon when he came home to dinner, a bell was rung for Richards to repair to this glass chamber, and there walk to and fro with her young charge. From