squeezed a new expression into his face. "Now I'm off. I'll just take a crust of bread with me, for I'm very hungry-and-don't wake her, uncle Sol."

"No, no," said Solomon. "Pretty child."

"Pretty, indeed!" cried Walter. "I never saw such a face, uncle Sol. Now I'm off."

"That's right," said Solomon, greatly relieved.

"I say, uncle Sol," cried Walter, putting his face in at the door. "Here he is again," said Solomon.

"How does she look now?"

"Quite happy," said Solomon.

"That's famous! now I'm off."

"I hope you are," said Solomon to himself.

"I say, uncle Sol," cried Walter, reappearing at the door.

"Here he is again!" said Solomon.

"We met Mr. Carker the junior in the street, queerer than ever.

He bade me good bye, but came behind us here-there's an odd thing !—for when we reached the shop door, I looked round, and saw him going quietly away, like a servant who had seen me home, or a faithful dog. How does she look now, uncle ?"

"Pretty much the same as before, Wally," replied uncle Sol. "That's right. Now I am off! ”

And this time he really was: and Solomon Gills, with no appetite for dinner, sat on the opposite side of the fire, watching Florence in her slumber, building a great many airy castles of the most fantastic architecture, and looking, in the dim shade, and in the close vicinity of all the instruments, like a magician disguised in a Welch wig and a suit of coffee colour, who held the child in an enchanted sleep.

In the mean time, Walter proceeded towards Mr. Dombey's house at a pace seldom achieved by a hack horse from the stand; and yet with his head out of window every two or three minutes, in impatient remonstrance with the driver. Arriving at his journey's end, he leaped out, and breathlessly announcing his errand to the servant, followed him straight into the library, where there was a great confusion of tongues, and where Mr. Dombey, his sister, and Miss Tox, Richards, and Nipper, were all congregated together.

"Oh! I beg your pardon, Sir," said Walter, rushing up to him, I'm happy to say it's all right, Sir. Miss Dombey's found!"

"but

The boy with his open face, and flowing hair, and sparkling eyes, panting with pleasure and excitement, was wonderfully opposed to Mr. Dombey as he sat confronting him in his library chair.

"I told you, Louisa, that she would certainly be found," said Mr.Dombey, looking slightly over his shoulder at that lady, who wept in company with Miss Tox. "Let the servants know that no further steps are necessary. This boy who brings the information, is young Gay, from the office. How was my daughter found, Sir? I know how she was lost." Here he looked majestically at Richards. "But how was she found? who found her?" "Why, I believe I found Miss Dombey, Sir," said Walter modestly; "at least I don't know that I can claim the merit of having exactly found her, Sir, but I was the fortunate instrument of—”

"What do you mean, Sir," interrupted Mr. Dombey, regarding the

boy's evident pride and pleasure in his share of the transaction with an instinctive dislike, "by not having exactly found my daughter, and by being a fortunate instrument? Be plain and coherent, if you please."

It was quite out of Walter's power to be coherent; but he rendered himself as explanatory as he could, in his breathless state, and stated why he had come alone.

"You hear this, girl?" said Mr. Dombey sternly to the black-eyed. "Take what is necessary, and return immediately with this young man to fetch Miss Florence home. Gay, you will be rewarded to-morrow." "Oh! thank you, Sir," said Walter. "You are very kind. I'm sure

I was not thinking of any reward, Sir."

"You are a boy," said Mr. Dombey, suddenly and almost fiercely; “and what you think of, or affect to think of, is of little consequence. You have done well, Sir. Don't undo it. Louisa, please to give the lad some wine."

Mr. Dombey's glance followed Walter Gay with sharp disfavour, as he left the room under the pilotage of Mrs. Chick; and it may be that his mind's eye followed him with no greater relish, as he rode back to his uncle's with Miss Susan Nipper.

There they found that Florence, much refreshed by sleep, had dined, and greatly improved the acquaintance of Solomon Gills, with whom she was on terms of perfect confidence and ease. The black-eyed (who had cried so much that she might now be called the red-eyed, and who was very silent and depressed) caught her in her arms without a word of contradiction or reproach, and made a very hysterical meeting of it. Then converting the parlour, for the nonce, into a private tyring room, she dressed her, with great care, in proper clothes; and presently led her forth, as like a Dombey as her natural disqualifications admitted of her being made.

"Good night!" said Florence, running up to Solomon. been very good to me."

"You have

Old Sol was quite delighted, and kissed her like her grandfather. "Good night, Walter! Good bye!" said Florence.

"Good bye!" said Walter, giving both his hands.

"I'll never forget you," pursued Florence. "No! indeed I never will. Good bye, Walter !"

In the innocence of her grateful heart, the child lifted up her face to his. Walter, bending down his own, raised it again, all red and burning; and looked at uncle Sol, quite sheepishly.

"Where's Walter ! "Good night, Walter!" "Good bye, Walter!” "Shake hands, once more, Walter!" This was still Florence's cry, after she was shut up with her little maid, in the coach. And when the coach at length moved off, Walter on the door-step gaily returned the waving of her handkerchief, while the wooden midshipman behind him seemed, like himself, intent upon that coach alone, excluding all the other passing coaches from his observation.

In good time Mr. Dombey's mansion was gained again, and again there was a noise of tongues in the library. Again, too, the coach was ordered to wait" for Mrs. Richards," one of Susan's fellow-servants ominously whispered, as she passed with Florence.

The entrance of the lost child made a slight sensation, but not much.

Mr. Dombey, who had never found her, kissed her once upon the forehead, and cautioned her not to run away again, or wander anywhere with treacherous attendants. Mrs. Chick stopped in her lamentations on the corruption of human nature, even when beckoned to the paths of virtue by a Charitable Grinder; and received her with a welcome something short of the reception due to none but perfect Dombeys. Miss Tox regulated her feelings by the models before her. Richards, the culprit Richards, alone poured out her heart in broken words of welcome, and bowed herself over the little wandering head as if she really loved it.

"Ah Richards! said Mrs. Chick, with a sigh. "It would have been much more satisfactory to those who wish to think well of their fellow creatures, and much more becoming in you, if you had shown some proper feeling, in time, for the little child that is now going to be prematurely deprived of its natural nourishment.”

"Cut off," said Miss Tox in a plaintive whisper, "from one common fountain!"

"If it was my ungrateful case," said Mrs. Chick, solemnly, "and I had your reflections, Richards, I should feel as if the Charitable Grinders' dress would blight my child, and the education choke him."

For the matter of that-but Mrs. Chick didn't know it-he had been pretty well blighted by the dress already; and as to the education, even its retributive effect might be produced in time, for it was a storm of

sobs and blows.

"Louisa!" said Mr. Dombey. "It is not necessary to prolong these observations. The woman is discharged and paid. You leave this house, Richards, for taking my son-my son" said Mr. Dombey, emphatically repeating those two words, "into haunts and into society which are not to be thought of without a shudder. As to the accident which befel Miss Florence this morning, I regard that, as, in one great sense, a happy and fortunate circumstance; inasmuch as, but for that occurrence, I never could have known-and from your own lips too-of what you had been guilty. I think, Louisa, the other nurse, the young person," here Miss Nipper sobbed aloud, "being so much younger, and necessarily influenced by Paul's nurse, may remain. Have the goodness to direct that this woman's coach is paid to- Mr. Dombey stopped and winced-" to Staggs's Gardens."

Polly moved towards the door, with Florence holding to her dress, and crying to her in the most pathetic manner not to go away. It was a dagger in the haughty father's heart, an arrow in his brain, to see how the flesh and blood he could not disown clung to this obscure stranger, and he sitting by. Not that he cared to whom his daughter turned, or from whom turned away. The swift sharp agony struck through him, as he thought of what his son might do.

His son cried lustily that night, at all events. Sooth to say, poor Paul had better reason for his tears than sons of that age often have, for he had lost his second mother-his first, so far as he knew-by a stroke as sudden as that natural affliction which had darkened the beginning of his life. At the same blow, his sister, too, who cried herself to sleep so mournfully, had lost as good and true a friend. But that is quite beside the question. Let us waste no words about it.

CHAPTER VII.

A BIRD'S EYE GLIMPSE OF MISS TOX'S DWELLING-PLACE; ALSO OF THE STATE OF MISS TOX'S AFFECTIONS.

MISS Tox inhabited a dark little house that had been squeezed, at some remote period of English History, into a fashionable neighbourhood at the west end of the town, where it stood in the shade like a poor relation of the great street round the corner, coldly looked down upon by mighty mansions. It was not exactly in a court, and it was not exactly in a yard; but it was in the dullest of No-Thoroughfares, rendered anxious and haggard by distant double knocks. The name of this retirement, where grass grew between the chinks in the stone pavement, was Princess's Place; and in Princess's Place was Princess's Chapel, with a tinkling bell, where sometimes as many as five-and-twenty people attended service on a Sunday. The Princess's Arms was also there, and much resorted to by splendid footmen. A sedan chair was kept inside the railing before the Princess's Arms, but it had never come out within the memory of man; and on fine mornings, the top of every rail (there were eight-and-forty, as Miss Tox had often counted) was decorated with a pewter-pot.

There was another private house besides Miss Tox's in Princess's Place: not to mention an immense pair of gates, with an immense pair of lionheaded knockers on them, which were never opened by any chance, and were supposed to constitute a disused entrance to somebody's stables. Indeed, there was a smack of stabling in the air of Princess's Place; and Miss Tox's bedroom (which was at the back) commanded a vista of Mews, where hostlers, at whatever sort of work engaged, were continually accompanying themselves with effervescent noises; and where the most domestic and confidential garments of coachmen and their wives and families, usually hung, like Macbeth's banners, on the outward walls.

At this other private house in Princess's Place, tenanted by a retired butler who had married a housekeeper, apartments were let Furnished, to a single gentleman: to wit a wooden-featured, blue-faced, Major, with his eyes starting out of his head, in whom Miss Tox recognised, as she herself expressed it, "something so truly military;" and between whom and herself, an occasional interchange of newspapers and pamphlets, and such Platonic dalliance, was effected through the medium of a dark servant of the Major's, whom Miss Tox was quite content to classify as a "native," without connecting him with any geographical idea whatever.

Perhaps there never was a smaller entry and staircase, than the entry and staircase of Miss Tox's house. Perhaps, taken altogether, from top to bottom, it was the most inconvenient little house in England, and the crookedest; but then, Miss Tox said, what a situation! There was very little daylight to be got there in the winter: no sun at the best of times: air was out of the question, and traffic was walled out. Still Miss Tox said, think of the situation! So said the blue-faced Major, whose eyes were starting out of his head: who gloried in Princess's Place: and who

delighted to turn the conversation at his club, whenever he could, to something connected with some of the great people in the great street round the corner, that he might have the satisfaction of saying they were his neighbours.

The dingy tenement inhabited by Miss Tox was her own; having been devised and bequeathed to her by the deceased owner of the fishy eye in the locket, of whom a miniature portrait, with a powdered head and a pigtail, balanced the kettle-holder on opposite sides of the parlour fire-place. The greater part of the furniture was of the powdered-head and pig-tail period: comprising a plate-warmer, always languishing and sprawling its four attenuated bow legs in somebody's way; and an obsolete harpsichord, illuminated round the maker's name with a painted garland of sweet peas.

Although Major Bagstock had arrived at what is called in polite literature, the grand meridian of life, and was proceeding on his journey downhill with hardly any throat, and a very rigid pair of jaw-bones, and long-flapped elephantine ears, and his eyes and complexion in the state of artificial excitement already mentioned, he was mightily proud of awakening an interest in Miss Tox, and tickled his vanity with the fiction that she was a splendid woman who had her eye on him. This he had several times hinted at the club: in connexion with little jocularities, of which old Joe Bagstock, old Joey Bagstock, old J. Bagstock, old Josh. Bagstock, or so forth, was the perpetual theme: it being, as it were, the Major's stronghold and donjon-keep of light humour, to be on the most familiar terms with his

own name.

"Joey B., Sir," the Major would say, with a flourish of his walking-stick, "is worth a dozen of you. If you had a few more of the Bagstock breed among you, Sir, you'd be none the worse for it. Old Joe, Sir, needn't look far for a wife even now, if he was on the look-out; but he's hardhearted, Sir, is Joe-he's tough, Sir, tough, and de-vilish sly!" After such a declaration, wheezing sounds would be heard; and the Major's blue would deepen into purple, while his eyes strained and started convulsively. Notwithstanding his very liberal laudation of himself, however, the Major was selfish. It may be doubted whether there ever was a more entirely selfish person at heart; or at stomach is perhaps a better expression, seeing that he was more decidedly endowed with that latter organ than with the former. He had no idea of being overlooked or slighted by anybody; least of all, had he the remotest comprehension of being overlooked and slighted by Miss Tox.

And yet, Miss Tox, as it appeared, forgot him-gradually forgot him. She began to forget him soon after her discovery of the Toodle family. She continued to forget him up to the time of the christening. She went on forgetting him with compound interest after that. Something or somebody had superseded him as a source of interest.

"Good morning, Ma'am," said the Major, meeting Miss Tox in Princess's Place, some weeks after the changes chronicled in the last chapter. "Good morning, Sir," said Miss Tox; very coldly.

"Joe Bagstock, Ma'am," observed the Major, with his usual gallantry, "has not had the happiness of bowing to you at your window, for a considerable period. Joe has been hardly used, Ma'am. His sun has been behind a cloud."