scholars, but where a dress and badge is likewise provided for them; I have (first communicating, through Mrs. Chick, with your family) nominated your eldest son to an existing vacancy; and he has this day, I am informed, assumed the habit. The number of her son, I believe," said Mr. Dombey, turning to his sister, and speaking of the child as if he were a hackney coach, "is one hundred and forty-seven. Louisa, you can tell her."

"One hundred and forty-seven," said Mrs. Chick. "The dress, Richards, is a nice, warm, blue baize tailed coat and cap, turned up with orange-coloured binding; red worsted stockings; and very strong leather small-clothes. One might wear the articles one's self," said Mrs. Chick with enthusiasm, "and be grateful."

"There, Richards!" said Miss Tox. "Now, indeed, you may be proud. The Charitable Grinders!"

"I am sure I am very much obliged, sir," returned Richards faintly, "and take it very kind that you should remember my little ones." At the same time a vision of Biler as a Charitable Grinder, with his very small legs encased in the serviceable clothing described by Mrs. Chick, swam before Richards's eyes, and made them water.

"I am very glad to see you have so much feeling, Richards," said Miss Tox.

"It makes one almost hope, it really does," said Mrs. Chick, who prided herself on taking trustful views of human nature," that there may yet be some faint spark of gratitude and right feeling in the world."

Richards deferred to these compliments by curtsying and murmuring her thanks; but finding it quite impossible to recover her spirits from the disorder into which, they had been thrown by the image of her son in his precocious nether garments, she gradually approached the door, and was heartily relieved to escape by it.

Such temporary indications of a partial thaw as had appeared with her, vanished with her; and the frost set in again, as cold and hard as ever. Mr. Chick was twice heard to hum a tune at the bottom of the table, but on both occasions it was a fragment of the Dead March in Saul. The party seemed to get colder and colder, and to be gradually resolving itself into a congealed and solid state, like the collation round which it was assembled. At length Mrs. Chick looked at Miss Tox, and Miss Tox returned the look, and they both rose and said it was really time to go. Mr. Dombey receiving this announcement with perfect equanimity, they

took leave of that gentleman, and presently departed under the protection of Mr. Chick; who, when they had turned their backs upon the house and left its master in his usual solitary state, put his hands in his pockets, threw him self back in the carriage, and whistled "With a hey ho chevy!" all through; conveying into his face, as he did so, an expression of such gloomy and terrible defiance, that Mrs. Chick dared not protest, or in any way molest him.

Richards, though she had little Paul on her lap, could not forget her own first-born. She felt it was ungrateful; but the influence of the day fell even on the Charitable Grinders, and she could hardly help regarding his pewter badge, number one hundred and forty-seven, as, somehow, a part of its formality and sternness. She spoke, too, in the nursery, of his "blessed legs," and was again troubled by his spectre in

uniform.

"I don't know what I wouldn't give," said Polly, "to see the poor little dear before he gets used to 'em."

"Why, then, I tell you what, Mrs. Richards," retorted Nipper, who had been admitted to her confidence, see him and make your mind easy."

"Mr. Dombey wouldn't like it," said Polly. "Oh wouldn't he, Mrs. Richards!" retorted Nipper, "he'd like it very much, I think, when he was asked."

"You wouldn't ask him, I suppose, at all?" said Polly.

"No, Mrs. Richards, quite contrairy," returned Susan," and them two inspectors, Tox and Chick, not intending to be on duty tomorrow, as I heard 'em say, me and Miss Floy will go along with you to-morrow morning, and welcome, Mrs. Richards, if you like, for we may as well walk there as up and down a street, and better too."

Polly rejected the idea pretty stoutly at first; but by little and little she began to entertain it, as she entertained more and more distinctly the forbidden pictures of her children and her own home. At length, arguing that there could be no great harm in calling for a moment at the door, she yielded to the Nipper proposition.

The matter being settled thus, little Paul began to cry most piteously, as if he had a foreboding that no good would come of it.

"What's the matter with the child?" asked Susan.

"He's cold, I think," said Polly, walking with him to and fro, and hushing him.

It was a bleak autumnal afternoon indeed;

and as she walked, and hushed, and, glancing through the dreary windows, pressed the little fellow closer to her breast, the withered leaves came showering down.

CHAPTER VI.

PAUL'S SECOND DEPRIVATION.

OLLY was beset by so many misgivings in the morning, that, but for the incessant promptings of her black-eyed companion, she would have abandoned all thoughts of the expedition, and formally petitioned for leave to see number one hundred and

forty-seven under the awful shadow of Mr. Dombey's roof. But Susan, who was personally disposed in favour of the excursion, and who (like Tony Lumpkin), if she could bear the disappointments of other people with tolerable. fortitude, could not abide to disappoint herself, threw so many ingenious doubts in the way of this second thought, and stimulated the original intention with so many ingenious arguments, that almost as soon as Mr. Dombey's stately back was turned, and that gentleman was pursuing his daily road towards the City, his unconscious son was on his way to Staggs's Gardens.

This euphonious locality was situated in a suburb, known by the inhabitants of Staggs's Gardens by the name of Camberling Town; a designation which the Stranger's Map of London, as printed (with a view to pleasant and commodious reference) on pocket-handkerchiefs, condenses, with some show of reason, into Camden Town. Hither the two nurses bent their steps, accompanied by their charges; Richards carrying Paul, of course, and Susan leading little Florence by the hand, and giving her such jerks and pokes, from time to time, as she considered it wholesome to administer.

The first shock of a great earthquake had, just at that period, rent the whole neighbourhood to its centre. Traces of its course were visible on every side. Houses were knocked down; streets broken through and stopped; deep pits and trenches dug in the ground; enormous heaps of earth and clay thrown up; buildings that were undermined and shaking propped by great beams of wood. Here, a chaos of carts, overthrown and jumbled together, lay topsyturvy at the bottom of a steep, unnatural hill; there, confused treasures of iron soaked and DOMBEY AND SON, 3.

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rusted in something that had accidentally become a pond. Everywhere were bridges that led nowhere; thoroughfares that were wholly impassable; Babel towers of chimneys, wanting half their height; temporary wooden houses and enclosures in the most unlikely situations; carcases of ragged tenements, and fragments of unfinished walls and arches, and piles of scaffolding, and wildernesses of bricks, and giant forms of cranes, and tripods straddling above nothing. There were a hundred thousand shapes and substances of incompleteness, wildly mingled out of their places, upside down, burrowing in the earth, aspiring in the air, mouldering in the water, and unintelligible as any dream. Hot springs and fiery eruptions, the usual attendants upon earthquakes, lent their contributions of confusion to the scene. Boiling water hissed and heaved within dilapidated walls; whence, also, the glare and roar of flames came issuing forth; and mounds of ashes blocked up rights of way, and wholly changed the law and custom of the neighbourhood.

In short, the yet unfinished and unopened railroad was in progress and, from the very core of all this dire disorder, trailed smoothly away upon its mighty course of civilisation and improvement.

But, as yet, the neighbourhood was shy to own the Railroad. One or two bold speculators had projected streets; and one had built a little, but had stopped among the mud and ashes to consider farther of it. A bran-new tavern, redolent of fresh mortar and size, and fronting nothing at all, had taken for its sign the Railway Arms; but that might be rash enterprise and then it hoped to sell drink to the workmen. So, the Excavators' House of Call had sprung up from a beer-shop; and the old-established Ham and Beef Shop had become the Railway Eating House, with a roast leg of pork daily, through interested motives of a similar immediate and popular description. Lodging-house keepers were favourable in like manner; and for the like reasons were not to be trusted. The general belief was very slow. There were frouzy fields, and cow-houses, and dunghills, and dust-heaps, and ditches, and gardens, and summer-houses, and carpet-beating grounds at the very door of the railway. Little tumuli of oyster shells in the oyster season, and of lobster shells in the lobster season, and of broken crockery and faded cabbage-leaves in all seasons, encroached upon its high places. Posts, and rails, and old cautions to trespassers, and backs of mean houses, and patches of wretched vegetation stared it out of countenance.

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No

thing was the better for it, or thought of being So. If the miserable waste ground lying near it could have laughed, it would have laughed it to scorn, like many of the miserable neighbours.

Staggs's Gardens was uncommonly incredulous. It was a little row of houses, with little squalid patches of ground before them, fenced off with old doors, barrel staves, scraps of tarpaulin, and dead bushes; with bottomless tin kettles and exhausted iron fenders thrust into the gaps. Here, the Staggs's Gardeners trained scarlet beans, kept fowls and rabbits, erected rotten summer-houses (one was an old boat), dried clothes, and smoked pipes. Some were of opinion that Staggs's Gardens derived its name from a deceased capitalist, one Mr. Staggs, who had built it for his delectation. Others, who had a natural taste for the country, held that it dated, from those rural times when the antlered herd, under the familiar denomination of Staggses, had resorted to its shady precincts. Be this as it may, Staggs's Gardens was regarded by its population as a sacred grove not to be withered by railroads; and so confident were they generally of its long outliving any such ridiculous inventions, that the master chimneysweeper at the corner, who was understood to take the lead in the local politics of the Gardens, had publicly declared that on the occasion of the railroad opening, if ever it did open, two of his boys should ascend the flues of his dwelling, with instructions to hail the failure with derisive cheers from the chimney-pots.

To this unhallowed spot, the very name of which had hitherto been carefully concealed from Mr. Dombey by his sister, was little Paul now borne by Fate and Richards.

"That's my house, Susan," said Polly, pointing it out.

"Is it, indeed, Mrs. Richards?" said Susan condescendingly.

"And there's my sister Jemima at the door, I do declare," cried Polly, "with my own sweet precious baby in her arms!"

The sight added such an extensive pair of wings to Polly's impatience, that she set off down the Gardens at a run, and bouncing on Jemima, changed babies with her in a twinkling; to the utter astonishment of that young damsel, on whom the heir of the Dombeys seemed to have fallen from the clouds.

"Why, Polly!" cried Jemima. "You! what a turn you have given me! who'd have thought it? come along in, Polly! How well you do look to be sure! The children will go half wild to see you, Polly, that they will."

That they did, if one might judge from the

noise they made, and the way in which they dashed at Polly and dragged her to a low chair in the chimney-corner, where her own honest apple face became immediately the centre of a bunch of smaller pippins, all laying their rosy cheeks close to it, and all evidently the growth of the same tree. As to Polly, she was full as noisy and vehement as the children; and it was not until she was quite out of breath, and her hair was hanging all about her flushed face, and her new christening attire was very much dishevelled, that any pause took place in the confusion. Even then, the smallest Toodle but one remained in her lap, holding on tight with both arms round her neck; while the smallest Toodle but two mounted on the back of the chair, and made desperate efforts, with one leg in the air, to kiss her round the corner.

"Look! there's a pretty little lady come to see you," said Polly; "and see how quiet she is! What a beautiful little lady, ain't she?"

This reference to Florence, who had been standing by the door not unobservant of what passed, directed the attention of the younger branches towards her; and had likewise the happy effect of leading to the formal recognition of Miss Nipper, who was not quite free from a misgiving that she had been already slighted.

"Oh, do come in and sit down a minute, Susan, please," said Polly. "This is my sister Jemima, this is. Jemima, I don't know what I should ever do with myself, if it wasn't for Susan Nipper; I shouldn't be here now but for her."

"Oh, do sit down, Miss Nipper, if you please," quoth Jemima.

Susan took the extreme corner of a chair, with a stately and ceremonious aspect.

"I never was so glad to see anybody in all my life; now really, I never was, Miss Nipper," said Jemima.

Susan relaxing, took a little more of the chair, and smiled graciously.

"Do untie your bonnet strings and make yourself at home, Miss Nipper, please," entreated Jemima. "I am afraid it's a poorer place than you're used to; but you'll make allowances, I'm sure."

The black-eyed was so softened by this deferential behaviour, that she caught up little Miss Toodle, who was running past, and took her to Banbury Cross immediately.

"But where's my pretty boy?" said Polly. "My poor fellow? I came all this way to see him in his new clothes."

break his heart when he hears his mother has been here. He's at school, Polly."

"Gone already!"

"Yes. He went for the first time yesterday, for fear he should lose any learning. But it's half-holiday, Polly: if you could only stop till he comes home-you and Miss Nipper, leastways," said Jemima, mindful in good time of the dignity of the black-eyed.

"And how does he look, Jemima, bless him?" faltered Polly.

"Well, really he don't look so bad as you'd suppose," returned Jemima.

"Ah!" said Polly with emotion, "I knew his legs must be too short."

His legs is short," returned Jemima; "especially behind; but they'll get longer, Polly, every day."

It was a slow, prospective kind of consolation; but the cheerfulness and good-nature with which it was administered gave it a value it did not intrinsically possess. After a moment's silence, Polly asked, in a more sprightly manner:

"And where's father, Jemima dear?"—for by that patriarchal appellation Mr. Toodle was generally known in the family.

"There again!" said Jemima. "What a pity! Father took his dinner with him this morning, and isn't coming home till night. But he's always talking of you, Polly, and telling the children about you; and is the peaceablest, patientest, best-temperedest soul in the world, as he always was and will be!"

"Thankee, Jemima," cried the simple Polly; delighted by the speech, and disappointed by the absence.

"Oh, you needn't thank me, Polly," said her sister, giving her a sound kiss upon the cheek, and then dancing little Paul cheerfully. "I say the same of you sometimes, and think it too."

In spite of the double disappointment, it was impossible to regard in the light of a failure a visit which was greeted with such a reception; so the sisters talked hopefully about family matters, and about Biler, and about all his brothers and sisters: while the black-eyed, having performed several journeys to Banbury Cross and back, took sharp note of the furniture, the Dutch clock, the cupboard, the castle on the mantel-piece with red and green windows in it, susceptible of illumination by a candle-end within; and the pair of small black velvet kittens, each with a lady's reticule in its mouth; regarded by the Staggs's Gardeners as prodigies of imitative art. The conversation soon becoming general, lest the black-eyed should go off at score and turn sarcastic, that young lady

35

related to Jemima a summary of everything she knew concerning Mr. Dombey, his prospects, family, pursuits, and character. Also an exact inventory of her personal wardrobe, and some account of her principal relations and friends. Having relieved her mind of these disclosures, she partook of shrimps and porter, and evinced a disposition to swear eternal friendship.

Little Florence herself was not behindhand in improving the occasion; for, being conducted forth by the young Toodles to inspect some toadstools and other curiosities of the Gardens, she entered with them, heart and soul, on the formation of a temporary breakwater across a small green pool that had collected in a corner. She was still busily engaged in that labour when sought and found by Susan; who, such was her sense of duty even under the humanising influence of shrimps, delivered a moral address to her (punctuated with thumps) on her degenerate nature, while washing her face and hands; and predicted that she would bring the grey hairs of her family in general with sorrow to the grave. After some delay, occasioned by a pretty long confidential interview above-stairs, on pecuniary subjects, between Polly and Jemima, an interchange of babies was again effected-for Polly had all this time retained her own child, and Jemima little Paul-and the visitors took leave.

But first the young Toodles, victims of a pious fraud, were deluded into repairing in a body to a chandler's shop in thé neighbourhood, for the ostensible purpose of spending a penny; and, when the coast was quite clear, Polly fled: Jemima calling after her that, if they could only go round towards the City Road on their way back, they would be sure to meet little Biler coming from school.

"Do you think that we might make time to go a little round in that direction, Susan?" inquired Polly when they halted to take breath.

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Why not, Mrs. Richards ?" returned Susan. "It's getting on towards our dinner-time you know," said Polly.

But lunch had rendered her companion more than indifferent to this grave consideration, so she allowed no weight to it, and they resolved to go "a little round."

Now, it happened that poor Biler's life had been, since yesterday morning, rendered weary by the costume of the Charitable Grinders. The youth of the streets could not endure it. No young vagabond could be brought to bear its contemplation for a moment, without throwing himself upon the unoffending wearer, and doing him a mischief. His social existence had been more like that of an early Christian than an

innocent child of the nineteenth century. He had been stoned in the streets. He had been overthrown into gutters; bespattered with mud; violently flattened against posts. Entire strangers to his person had lifted his yellow cap off his head, and cast it to the winds. His legs had not only undergone verbal criticisms and revilings, but had been handled and pinched. That very morning he had received a perfectly unsolicited black eye on his way to the Grinders' establishment, and had been punished for it by the master: a superannuated old Grinder of savage disposition, who had been appointed schoolmaster because he didn't know anything, and wasn't fit for anything, and for whose cruel cane all chubby little boys had a perfect fascination.

Thus it fell out that Biler, on his way home, sought unfrequented paths; and slunk along by narrow passages and back-streets, to avoid his tormentors. Being compelled to emerge into the main road, his ill-fortune brought him at last where a small party of boys, headed by a ferocious young butcher, were lying in wait for any means of pleasurable excitement that might happen. These, finding a Charitable Grinder in the midst of them-unaccountably delivered over, as it were, into their hands-set up a general yell and rushed upon him.

But it so fell out, likewise, that, at the same time, Polly, looking hopelessly along the road before her, after a good hour's walk, had said it was no use going any farther, when suddenly she saw this sight. She no sooner saw it than, uttering a hasty exclamation, and giving Master Dombey to the black-eyed, she started to the rescue of her unhappy little son.

Surprises, like misfortunes, rarely come alone. The astonished Susan Nipper and her two young charges were rescued by the bystanders from under the very wheels of a passing carriage before they knew what had happened; and at that moment (it was market-day) a thundering alarm of " Mad Bull !" was raised.

With a wild confusion before her of people running up and down, and shouting, and wheels running over them, and boys fighting, and mad bulls coming up, and the nurse in the midst of all these dangers being torn to pieces, Florence screamed and ran. She ran till she was exhausted, urging Susan to do the same; and then, stopping and wringing her hands as she remembered they had left the other nurse behind, found, with a sensation of terror not to be described, that she was quite alone.

"Susan! Susan!" cried Florence, clapping her hands in the very ecstasy of her alarm. Oh, where are they? where are they?"

"Where are they?" said an old woman, coming hobbling across as fast as she could from the opposite side of the way. "Why did you run away from 'em?"

"I

"I was frightened," answered Florence. didn't know what I did. I thought they were with me. Where are they?"

The old woman took her by the wrist, and said, "I'll show you."

She was a very ugly old woman, with red rims round her eyes, and a mouth that mumbled and chattered of itself when she was not speaking. She was miserably dressed, and carried some skins over her arm. She seemed to have followed Florence some little way, at all events, for she had lost her breath; and this made her uglier still, as she stood trying to regain it : working her shrivelled yellow face and throat into all sorts of contortions.

Florence was afraid of her, and looked, hesitating, up the street, of which she had almost reached the bottom. It was a solitary placemore a back-road than a street-and there was no one in it but herself and the old woman.

"You needn't be frightened now," said the old woman, still holding her tight. "Come along with me."

"I-I don't know you. What's your name?" asked Florence.

"Mrs. Brown," said the old woman. Mrs. Brown."

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66 'Good

'Are they near here?" asked Florence, beginning to be led away.

"Susan ain't far off," said Good Mrs. Brown; "and the others are close to her."

"Is anybody hurt?" cried Florence. "Not a bit of it," said Good Mrs. Brown. The child shed tears of delight on hearing this, and accompanied the old woman willingly; though she could not help glancing at her face as they went along-particularly at that industrious mouth-and wondering whether Bad Mrs. Brown, if there were such a person, was at all like her.

They had not gone far, but had gone by some very uncomfortable places, such as brick-fields and tile-yards, when the old woman turned down a dirty lane, where the mud lay in deep black ruts in the middle of the road. She stopped before a shabby little house, as closely shut up as a house that was full of cracks and crevices could be. Opening the door with a key she took out of her bonnet, she pushed the child before her into a back-room, where there was a great heap of rags of different colours lying on the floor, a heap of bones, and a heap of sifted dust or cinders; but there was no furniture