Mr. Toots said, looking doubtfully at Paul, and shaking his head, that he didn't know about that.

"Not blowing, at least," said Paul, "but sounding in the air like the sea sounds in the shells. It was a beautiful night. When I had listened to the water for a long time, I got up and looked out. There was a boat over there, in the full light of the moon; a boat with a sail."

The child looked at him so steadfastly, and spoke so earnestly, that Mr. Toots, feeling himself called upon to say something about this boat, said, "Smugglers." But, with an impartial remembrance of there being two sides to every question, he added, "or Preventive."

"A boat with a sail," repeated Paul, "in the full light of the moon. The sail like an arm, all silver. It went away into the distance, and what do you think it seemed to do as it moved with the waves? "

"Pitch," said Mr. Toots.

"It seemed to beckon," said the child, "to beckon me to come !-There she is! There she is!"

Toots was almost beside himself with dismay at this sudden exclamation, after what had gone before, and cried, "Who?"

"My sister Florence!" cried Paul, "looking up here, and waving her hand. She sees meshe sees me! Good night, dear, good night, good night!'

His quick transition to a state of unbounded pleasure, as he stood at his window, kissing and clapping his hands: and the way in which the light retreated from his features as she passed out of his view, and left a patient melancholy on the little face: were too remarkable wholly to escape even Toots's notice. Their interview being interrupted at this moment by a visit from Mrs. Pipchin, who usually brought her black skirts to bear upon Paul just before dusk, once or twice a week, Toots had no opportunity of improving the occasion: but it left so marked an impression on his mind, that he twice returned, after having exchanged the usual salutations, to ask Mrs. Pipchin how she did. This the irascible old lady conceived to be a deeplydevised and long-meditated insult, originating in the diabolical invention of the weak-eyed young man down-stairs, against whom she accordingly lodged a formal complaint with Doctor Blimber that very night; who mentioned to the young man that if he ever did it again, he should be obliged to part with him.

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The evenings being longer now, Paul stole up to his window every evening to look out for Florence. She always passed and repassed at a certain time until she saw him; and their mutual recognition was a gleam of sunshine in Paul's daily life. Often, after dark, one other figure walked alone before the Doctor's house. He rarely joined them on the Saturday now. could not bear it. He would rather come unrecognised, and look up at the windows where his son was qualifying for a man; and wait, and watch, and plan, and hope.

He

Oh! could he but have seen, or seen as others did, the slight, spare boy above, watching the waves and clouds at twilight with his earnest eyes, and breasting the window of his solitary cage when birds flew by, as if he would have emulated them, and soared away!

CHAPTER XIII.

SHIPPING INTELLIGENCE AND OFFICE BUSINESS.

R. DOMBEY'S offices were in a court where there was an old-established stall of choice fruit at the corner: where perambulating merchants, of both sexes, offered for sale, at any no time between the hours of ten and five, slippers, pocket-books, sponges, dogs' collars, and Windsor soap; and sometimes a pointer or an oil-painting.

The pointer always came that way, with a view to the Stock Exchange, where a sporting taste (originating generally in bets of new hats) is much in vogue. The other commodities were addressed to the general public; but they were never offered by the vendors to Mr. Dombey. When he appeared, the dealers in those wares fell off respectfully. The principal slipper and dog's-collar man-who considered himself a public character, and whose portrait was screwed on to an artist's door in Cheapside -threw up his forefinger to the brim of his hat as Mr. Dombey went by. The ticket porter, if he were not absent on a job, always ran officiously before, to open Mr. Dombey's office door as wide as possible, and hold it open, with his hat off, while he entered.

The clerks within were not a whit behindhand in their demonstrations of respect. A solemn hush prevailed as Mr. Dombey passed through the outer office. The wit of the Counting-house became, in a moment, as mute as the row of

leathern fire-buckets hanging up behind him. Such vapid and flat daylight as filtered through the ground-glass windows and sky-lights, leaving a black sediment upon the panes, showed the books and papers, and the figures bending over them, enveloped in a studious gloom, and as much abstracted, in appearance, from the world without, as if they were assembled at the bottom of the sea; while a mouldy little strong-room in the obscure perspective, where a shaded lamp was always burning, might have represented the cavern of some ocean monster, looking on with a red eye at these mysteries of the deep.

When Perch, the messenger, whose place was on a little bracket, like a time-piece, saw Mr. Dombey come in-or rather, when he felt that he was coming, for he had usually an instinctive sense of his approach-he hurried into Mr. Dombey's room, stirred the fire, quarried fresh coals from the bowels of the coal-box, hung the newspaper to air upon the fender, put the chair ready, and the screen in its place, and was round upon his heel on the instant of Mr. Dombey's entrance, to take his great-coat and hat, and hang them up. Then Perch took the newspaper, and gave it a turn or two in his hands before the fire, and laid it, deferentially, at Mr. Dombey's elbow. And so little objection had Perch to doing deferential in the last degree, that if he might have laid himself at Mr. Dombey's feet, or might have called him by some such title as used to be bestowed upon the Caliph Haroun Alraschid, he would have been all the better pleased.

As this honour would have been an innovation and an experiment, Perch was fain to content himself by expressing as well as he could, in his manner, You are the Light of my Eyes. You are the Breath of my Soul. You are the Commander of the Faithful Perch! With this imperfect happiness to cheer him, he would shut the door softly, walk away on tiptoe, and leave his great chief to be stared at, through a domeshaped window in the leads, by ugly chimneypots and backs of houses, and especially by the bold window of a hair-cutting saloon on a first floor, where a waxen effigy, bald as a Mussulman in the morning, and covered, after eleven o'clock in the day, with luxuriant hair and whiskers in the latest Christian fashion, showed him the wrong side of its head for ever.

Between Mr. Dombey and the common world, as it was accessible through the medium of the outer office to which Mr. Dombey's presence in his own room may be said to have struck like damp, or cold air-there were two degrees of descent. Mr. Carker, in his own office, was the

first step; Mr. Morfin, in his own office, was the second. Each of these gentlemen occupied a little chamber like a bath-room, opening from the passage outside Mr. Dombey's door. Mr. Carker, as Grand Vizier, inhabited the room that was nearest to the Sultan. Mr. Morfin, as an officer of inferior state, inhabited the room that was nearest to the clerks.

The gentleman last mentioned was a cheerfullooking, hazel-eyed, elderly bachelor; gravely attired, as to his upper man, in black; and as to his legs, in pepper-and-salt colour. His dark hair was just touched here and there with specks of grey, as though the tread of Time had splashed it and his whiskers were already white. He had a mighty respect for Mr. Dombey, and rendered him due homage; but as he was of a genial temper himself, and never wholly at his ease in that stately presence, he was disquieted by no jealousy of the many conferences enjoyed by Mr. Carker, and felt a secret satisfaction in having duties to discharge which rarely exposed him to be singled out for such distinction. He was a great musical amateur in his way-after business; and had a paternal affection for his violoncello, which was once in every week transported from Islington, his place of abode, to a certain club-room hard by the Bank, where quartets of the most tormenting and excruciating nature were executed every Wednesday evening by a private party. Mr. Carker was a gentleman thirty-eight or forty years old, of a florid complexion, and with two unbroken rows of glistening teeth, whose regularity and whiteness were quite distressing. It was impossible to escape the observation of them, for he showed them whenever he spoke; and bore so wide a smile upon his countenance (a smile, however, very rarely indeed extending beyond his mouth), that there was something in it like the snarl of a cat. He affected a stiff white cravat, after the example of his principal, and was always closely buttoned up and tightly dressed. His manner towards Mr. Dombey was deeply conceived and perfectly expressed. He was familiar with him, in the very extremity of his sense of the distance between them. "Mr. Dombey, to a man in your position from a man in mine, there is no show of subservience, compatible with the transaction of business between us, that I should think sufficient. I frankly tell you, sir, I give it up altogether. I feel that I could not satisfy my own mind; and Heaven knows, Mr. Dombey, you can afford to dispense with the endeavour," If he had carried these words about with him, printed on a placard, and had constantly offered it to Mr. Dombey's perusal on

but he was always at the bottom. He was quite resigned to occupy that low condition: never complained of it: and certainly never hoped to escape from it.

"How do you do this morning?" said Mr. Carker the manager, entering Mr. Dombey's

room soon after his arrival one day: with a bundle of papers in his hand.

"How do you do, Carker ?" said Mr. Dombey, rising from his chair, and standing with his back to the fire. "Have you anything there for me?"

"I don't know that I need trouble you," re

turned Carker, turning over the papers in his hand. "You have a committee to-day at three, you know."

"And one at three, three-quarters," added Mr. Dombey.

"Catch you forgetting anything!" exclaimed Carker, still turning over his papers. "If Mr. Paul inherits your memory, he'll be a troublesome customer in the House. One of you is enough." "You have an accurate memory of your own," said Mr. Dombey.

"Oh! I!" returned the manager. "It's the only capital of a man like me."

Mr. Dombey did not look less pompous, or at all displeased, as he stood leaning against the chimney-piece, surveying his (of course unconscious) clerk from head to foot. The stiffness and nicety of Mr. Carker's dress, and a certain arrogance of manner, either natural to him or imitated from a pattern not far off, gave great additional effect to his humility. He seemed a man who would contend against the power that vanquished him, if he could, but who was utterly borne down by the greatness and superiority of Mr. Dombey.

"Is Morfin here?" asked Mr. Dombey after a short pause, during which Mr. Carker had been fluttering his papers, and muttering little abstracts of their contents to himself.

"Morfin's here," he answered, looking up with his widest and most sudden smile; "humming musical recollections-of his last night's quartet party, I suppose-through the walls between us, and driving me half mad. I wish he'd make a bonfire of his violoncello, and burn his music-books in it."

"You respect nobody, Carker, I think," said Mr. Dombey.

"No?" inquired Carker, with another wide and most feline show of his teeth. "Well! Not many people, I believe. I wouldn't answer, perhaps," he murmured, as if he were only thinking it, "for more than one."

A dangerous quality, if real; and a not less dangerous one, if feigned. But Mr. Dombey hardly seemed to think so, as he still stood with his back to the fire, drawn up to his full height, and looking at his head clerk with a dignified. composure, in which there seemed to lurk a stronger latent sense of power than usual.

"Talking of Morfin," resumed Mr. Carker, taking out one paper from the rest, "he reports a junior dead in the agency at Barbadoes, and proposes to reserve a passage in the Son and Heir-she'll sail in a month or so-for the successor. You don't care who goes, I suppose? We have nobody of that sort here."

Mr. Dombey shook his head with supreme indifference.

"It's no very precious appointment," observed Mr. Carker, taking up a pen with which to indorse a memorandum on the back of the paper. "I hope he may bestow it on some orphan nephew of a musical friend. It may perhaps stop his fiddle-playing, if he has a gift that way. Who's that? Come in!"

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Carker. I didn't know you were here, sir," answered Walter, appearing with some letters in his hand, unopened, and newly arrived. "Mr. Carker the junior, sir

At the mention of this name, Mr. Carker the manager was, or affected to be, touched to the quick with shame and humiliation. He cast his eyes full on Mr. Dombey with an altered and apologetic look, abased them on the ground, and remained for a moment without speaking.

"I thought, sir," he said suddenly and angrily, turning on Walter, "that you had been before requested not to drag Mr. Carker the junior into your conversation."

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I beg your pardon," returned Walter. "I was only going to say that Mr. Carker the junior had told me he believed you were gone out, or I should not have knocked at the door when you were engaged with Mr. Dombey. These are letters for Mr. Dombey, sir."

"Very well, sir," returned Mr. Carker the manager, plucking them sharply from his hand. "Go about your business."

But, in taking them with so little ceremony, Mr. Carker dropped one on the floor, and did not see what he had done; neither did Mr. Dombey observe the letter lying near his feet. Walter hesitated for a moment, thinking that one or other of them would notice it; but finding that neither did, he stopped, came back, picked it up, and laid it himself on Mr. Dombey's desk. The letters were post letters; and it happened that the one in question was Mrs. Pipchin's regular report, directed as usual-for Mrs. Pipchin was but an indifferent penwomanby Florence. Mr. Dombey, having his attention. silently called to this letter by Walter, started and looked fiercely at him, as if he believed that he had purposely selected it from all the rest.

"You can leave the room, sir!" said Mr. Dombey haughtily.

He crushed the letter in his hand; and, having watched Walter out at the door, put it in his pocket without breaking the seal.

"You want somebody to send to the West Indies, you were saying," observed Mr. Dombey hurriedly.

"Yes," replied Carker.

"Send young Gay."

"Good, very good indeed. Nothing easier," said Mr. Carker without any show of surprise, and taking up the pen to re-indorse the letter as coolly as he had done before. "Send young Gay.""

"Call him back," said Mr. Dombey. Mr. Carker was quick to do so, and Walter was quick to return.

"Gay," said Mr. Dombey, turning a little to look at him over his shoulder, "here is a” "An opening," said Mr. Carker, with his mouth stretched to the utmost.

"In the West Indies. At Barbadoes. I am going to send you," said Mr. Dombey, scorning to embellish the bare truth, "to fill a junior situation in the counting-house at Barbadoes. Let your uncle know from me that I have chosen you to go to the West Indies."

Walter's breath was so completely taken away by his astonishment, that he could hardly find enough for the repetition of the words "West Indies."

"Somebody must go," said Mr. Dombey, "and you are young and healthy, and your uncle's circumstances are not good. Tell your uncle that you are appointed. You will not go yet.

There will be an interval of a month-or two, perhaps."

"Shall I remain there, sir?" inquired Walter. "Will you remain there, sir!" repeated Mr. Dombey, turning a little more round towards him. "What do you mean? What does he mean, Carker?"

"Live there, sir?" faltered Walter. "Certainly," returned Mr. Dombey. Walter bowed.

"That's all," said Mr. Dombey, resuming his letters. "You will explain to him in good time about the usual outfit, and so forth, Carker, of course. He needn't wait, Carker."

"You needn't wait, Gay," observed Mr. Carker bare to the gums.

"Unless," said Mr. Dombey, stopping in his reading without looking off the letter, and seeming to listen-"unless he has anything to say."

'No, sir," returned Walter, agitated and confused, and almost stunned, as an infinite variety of pictures presented themselves to his mind; among which Captain Cuttle, in his glazed hat, transfixed with astonishment at Mrs. MacStinger's, and his uncle bemoaning his loss in the little back-parlour, held prominent places. “I hardly know-I-I am much obliged, sir." "He needn't wait, Carker," said Mr. Dombey. And as Mr. Carker again echoed the words, ́and also collected his papers as if he were going

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away too, Walter felt that his lingering any longer would be an unpardonable intrusionespecially as he had nothing to say-and therefore walked out quite confounded.

Going along the passage, with the mingled consciousness and helplessness of a dream, he heard Mr. Dombey's door shut again as Mr. Carker came out and immediately afterwards that gentleman called to him.

"Bring your friend Mr. Carker the junior to my room, sir, if you please."

Walter went to the outer office, and apprised Mr. Carker the junior of his errand, who accordingly came out from behind a partition where he sat alone in one corner, and returned with him to the room of Mr. Carker the manager.

That gentleman was standing with his back to the fire, and his hands under his coat-tails, looking over his white cravat, as unpromisingly as Mr. Dombey himself could have looked. He received them without any change in his attitude or softening of his harsh and black expression: merely signing to Walter to close the door.

"John Carker," said the manager, when this was done, turning suddenly upon his brother, with his two rows of teeth bristling as if he would have bitten him, "what is the league between you and this young man, in virtue of which I am haunted and hunted by the mention of your name? Is it not enough for you, John Carker, that I am your near relation, and can't detach myself from that—"

"Say disgrace, James," interposed the other in a low voice, finding that he stammered for a word. "You meant it, and have reason: say disgrace."

"From that disgrace," assented his brother with keen emphasis, "but is the fact to be blurted out and trumpeted, and proclaimed continually in the presence of the very House? In moments of confidence, too? Do you think your name is calculated to harmonise in this place with trust and confidence, John Carker ?"

"No," returned the other. "No, James. God knows I have no such thought."

"What is your thought, then?" said his brother," and why do you thrust yourself in my way? Haven't you injured me enough already?" "I have never injured you, James, wilfully." "You are my brother," said the manager. "That's injury enough."

"I wish I could undo it, James." "I wish you could and would." During this conversation, Walter had looked from one brother to the other with pain and amazement. He who was the senior in years, and junior in the House, stood, with his eyes