"How does he bear it, my dear creature?" asks Miss Tox. "Well," says Mrs. Pipchin, in her snappish way, "he's pretty much as usual.”

"Externally," suggests Miss Tox. "But what he feels within! "

Mrs. Pipchin's hard grey eye looks doubtful as she answers, in three distinct jerks, "Ah! Perhaps. I suppose so."

"To tell you my mind, Lucretia," says Mrs. Pipchin she still calls Miss Tox Lucretia, on account of having made her first experiments in the child-quelling line of business on that lady, when an unfortunate and weazen little girl of tender years "to tell you my mind, Lucretia, I think it's a good riddance. I don't want any of your brazen faces here, myself!" "Brazen, indeed! Well may you say brazen, Mrs. Pipchin! returns Miss Tox. "To leave him! Such a noble figure of a man!" And here Miss Tox is overcome.

"I don't know about noble, I'm sure," observes Mrs. Pipchin, irascibly rubbing her nose. "But I know this- that when people meet with trials, they must bear 'em. Hoity, toity! I have had enough to bear myself in my time! What a fuss there is! She's gone, and well got rid of. Nobody wants her back, I should think!

This hint of the Peruvian Mines causes Miss Tox to rise to go away; when Mrs. Pipchin rings the bell for Towlinson to show her out. Mr. Towlinson, not having seen Miss Tox for ages, grins, and hopes she's well; observing that he did n't know her at first, in that bonnet.

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"Pretty well, Towlinson, I thank you," says Miss Tox. "I beg you'll have the goodness, when you happen to see me here, not to mention it. My visits are merely to Mrs. Pipchin." "Very good, miss," says Towlinson.

"Shocking circumstances occur, Towlinson," says Miss Tox. "Very much so indeed, miss," rejoins Towlinson.

"I hope, Towlinson," says Miss Tox, who, in her instruction of the Toodle family has acquired an admonitorial tone, and a habit of improving passing occasions, "that what has happened here will be a warning to you, Towlinson."

"Thank you, miss, I'm sure," says Towlinson.

He appears to be falling into a consideration of the manner in which this warning ought to operate in his particular case, when the vinegary Mrs. Pipchin, suddenly stirring him up with

a "What are you doing! Why don't you show the lady to the door!" he ushers Miss Tox forth. As she passes Mr. Dombey's room, she shrinks into the inmost depths of the black bonnet, and walks on tiptoe; and there is not another atom in the world which haunts him so that feels such sorrow and solicitude about him as Miss Tox takes out under the black bonnet into the street, and tries to carry home shadowed from the newly lighted lamps. She

But Miss Tox is not a part of Mr. Dombey's world. comes back every evening at dusk; adding clogs and an umbrella to the bonnet on wet nights; and bears the grins of Towlinson, and the huffs and rebuffs of Mrs. Pipchin, and all to ask how he does, and how he bears his misfortune; but she has nothing to do with Mr. Dombey's world. Exacting and harassing as ever, it goes on without her; and she, a by no means bright or particular star, moves in her little orbit in the corner of another system, and knows it quite well, and comes, and cries, and goes away, and is satisfied. Verily Miss Tox is easier of satisfaction than the world that troubles Mr. Dombey so much!

At the counting-house the clerks discuss the great disaster in all its lights and shades, but chiefly wonder who will get Mr. Carker's place. They are generally of opinion that it will be shorn of some of its emoluments, and made uncomfortable by newly devised checks and restrictions; and those who are beyond all hope of it are quite sure they would rather not have it, and don't at all envy the person for whom it may prove to be reserved. Nothing like the prevailing sensation has existed in the counting-house since Mr. Dombey's little son died; but all such excitements there take a social, not to say jovial turn, and lead to the cultivation of good-fellowship. A reconciliation is established on this propitious occasion between the acknowledged wit of the counting-house and an aspiring rival, with whom he has been at deadly feud for months; and a little dinner being proposed, in commemoration of their happily restored amity, takes place at a neighbouring tavern; the wit in the chair; the rival acting as Vice-President. The orations following the removal of the cloth are opened by the chair, who says, gentlemen, he can't disguise from himself that this is not a time for private dissensions. Recent occurrences to which he need not more particularly allude, but which have not been

altogether without notice in some Sunday papers, and in a daily paper which he need not name (here every other member of the company names it in an audible murmur), have caused him to reflect; and he feels that for him and Robinson to have any personal differences at such a moment would be for ever to deny that good feeling in the general cause, for which he has reason to think and hope that the gentlemen in Dombey's House have always been distinguished. Robinson replies to this like a man and a brother; and one gentleman who has been in the office three years, under continual notice to quit on account of lapses in his arithmetic, appears in a perfectly new light, suddenly bursting out with a thrilling speech, in which he says, May their respected chief never again know the desolation which has fallen on his hearth! and says a great variety of things, beginning May he never again," which are received with thunders of applause. In short, a most delightful evening is passed, only interrupted by a difference between two juniors, who, quarrelling about the probable amount of Mr. Carker's late receipts per annum, defy each other with decanters, and are taken out greatly excited. Soda water is in general request at the office next day, and most of the party deem the bill an imposition.

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As to Perch, the messenger, he is in a fair way of being ruined for life. He finds himself again constantly in bars of public-houses, being treated and lying dreadfully. It appears that he met everybody concerned in the late transaction, everywhere, and said to them, Sir," or 66 Madam," as the case was, "why do you look so pale?" at which each shuddered from head to foot, and said, "Oh, Perch!" and ran away. Either the consciousness of these enormities, or the reaction consequent on liquor, reduces Mr. Perch to an extreme state of low spirits at that hour of the evening when he usually seeks consolation in the society of Mrs. Perch at Balls Pond; and Mrs. Perch frets a good deal, for she fears his confidence in woman is shaken now, and that he half expects on coming home at night to find her gone off with some Viscount.

Mr. Dombey's servants are becoming, at the same time, quite dissipated, and unfit for other service. They have hot suppers every night, and "talk it over" with smoking drinks upon the board. Mr. Towlinson is always maudlin after half-past ten, and frequently begs to know whether he did n't say that no good would ever come of living in a corner house? They whisper

about Miss Florence, and wonder where she is; but agree that if Mr. Dombey don't know, Mrs. Dombey does. This brings them to the latter, of whom cook says, she had a stately way, though, had n't she? But she was too high. They all agree that she was too high, and Mr. Towlinson's old flame, the housemaid (who is very virtuous), entreats that you will never talk to her any more about people who holds their heads up, as if the ground was n't good enough for 'em.

Everything that is said or done about it, except by Mr. Dombey, is done in chorus. Mr. Dombey and the world are

alone together.

CHAPTER LII

SECRET INTELLIGENCE.

GOOD Mrs. Brown and her daughter Alice kept silent company together in their own dwelling. It was early in the evening, and late in the spring. But a few days had elapsed since Mr. Dombey had told Major Bagstock of his singular intelligence, singularly obtained, which might turn out to be valueless, and might turn out to be true; and the world was not satisfied yet.

The mother and daughter sat for a long time without interchanging a word, almost without motion. The old woman's face was shrewdly anxious and expectant; that of her daughter was expectant too, but in a less sharp degree, and sometimes it darkened, as if with gathering disappointment and incredulity. The old woman, without heeding these changes in its expression, though her eyes were often turned towards it, sat mumbling and munching, and listening confidently.

Their abode, though poor and miserable, was not so utterly wretched as in the days when only Good Mrs. Brown inhabited it. Some few attempts at cleanliness and order were manifest, though made in a reckless, gipsy way that might have connected them, at a glance, with the younger woman. The shades of evening thickened and deepened as the two kept silence, until the blackened walls were nearly lost in the prevailing gloom.

Then Alice broke the silence which had lasted so long and said:

"You may give him up, mother. He'll not come here." "Death give him up!" returned the old woman impatiently. "He will come here."

"We shall see," said Alice.

"We shall see him," returned her mother.

"And doomsday," said the daughter.

“You think I'm in my second childhood, I know!" croaked the old woman. "That's the respect and duty that I get from