When Walter ceased to speak, Mr. Dombey's eyes were at tracted 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 re garding 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 Flor

ence."

"Girls," said Mr. Dombey, "have nothing to do with Dom bey 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 Čaptain 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 endeav oured 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. Fardon me, Mr. Dombey, I think, in the nobility of your character, and its exalted scope, you have o nitted a matter of detail."

66

Indeed, Miss Tox!" said Mr. Dombey.

"The gentleman with the

Instrument," pursued Misa Tox, glancing at Captain Cuttle, "has left upon the table, at four 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 ycu, 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. am so thankful to papa!"

"Don't be angry with me. I

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 baili.fs 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 recov ery by some rough wind, that we are the most disposed to pictare to ourselves what flowers they might have borne, if they

had flourished; and now, when Walter felt 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 im mensely forwarded, if not thoroughly established, the Whitting tonian 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 chyming to leg (in which personal beauty the original was de. scribed 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 hand when he must seek the abode of the dreadful Mrs. MacStinger.

CHAPTER XI.

Paul's Introduction to a New Scene.

RS. 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 requir ing to be coaxed to sleep by the soporific agency of sweetbreads, that it utterly set at nought the predictions of Mrs. Wickam, and showed no symptoms of decline. Yet, as Paul's tapt interest in the old lady continued unabated, 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 pow der-mill.

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 numerable sacrifices of herself upon the altar of that oble old woman. But all these immolations of Berry were Comehow carried to the credit of Mrs. Pipchin by Mrs. Pipchin's riends and admirers; and were made to harmonise with, and Larry out, that melancholy fact of the deceased Mr. Pipchin aving broken his heart in the Peruvian mines.

For example, there was an honest grocer and general dealer n 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 the 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 Flor ence ? "

"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 is chair, and looking at her very hard.