"Ah!" said Miss Tox, with deep feeling.

"Im-mense!"

"But his deportment, my dear Louisa! said Miss Tox. "His presence! His dignity! No portrait that I have ever seen of any one has been half so replete with those qualities. Something so stately, you know: so uncompromising: so very wide across the chest so upright! A pecuniary Duke of York, my love, and nothing short of it!" said Miss Tox. "That's what I should designate him."

"Why, my dear Paul!" exclaimed his sister, as he returned, "you look quite pale! There's nothing the matter?"

"I am sorry to say, Louisa, that they tell me that Fanny-" "Now, my dear Paul," returned his sister rising, "don't believe it. If you have any reliance on my experience, Paul, you may rest assured that there is nothing wanting but an effort on Fanny's part. And that effort," she continued, taking off her bonnet, and adjusting her cap and gloves, in a businesslike manner, "she must be encouraged, and really, if necessary, urged to make. Now, my dear Paul, come up stairs with me.'

Mr. Dombey, who, besides being generally influenced by his sister for the reason already mentioned, had really faith in her as an experienced and bustling matron, acquiesced and followed her, at once, to the sick chamber.

The lady lay upon her bed as he had left her, clasping her little daughter to her breast. The child clung close about her with the same intensity as before, and never raised her head, or moved her soft cheek from her mother's face, or looked on those who stood around, or spoke, or moved, or shed a tear.

"Restless without the little girl," the Doctor whispered Mr. Dombey. "We found it best to have her in again."

There was such a solemn stillness round the bed; and the two medical attendants seemed to look on the impassive form with so much compassion and so little hope, that Mrs. Chick was for the moment diverted from her purpose. But presently summoning courage, and what she called presence of mind, she sat down by the bedside, and said in the low precise tone of one who endeavors to awaken a sleeper:

"Fanny! Fanny!"

There was no sound in answer but the loud ticking of Mr. Dombey's watch and Doctor Parker Peps's watch, which seemed in the silence to be running a race.

"Fanny, my dear," said Mrs. Chick, with assumed lightness, "here's Mr. Dombey come to see you. Won't you speak to him? They want to lay your little boy-the baby, Fanny,

you know; you have hardly seen him yet, I think-in bed ; but they can't till you rouse yourself a little? Don't you think it's time you roused yourself a little? Eh?"

:

She bent her ear to the bed, and listened at the same time looking round at the bystanders, and holding up her finger. "Eh?" she repeated, "what was it you said, Fanny? I didn't hear you."

No word or sound in answer. Mr. Dombey's watch and Dr. Parker Peps's watch seemed to be racing faster.

"Now, really Fanny, my dear," said the sister-in-law, altering her position, and speaking less confidently, and more earnestly, in spite of herself, "I shall have to be quite cross with you if you don't rouse yourself. It is necessary for you to make an effort, and perhaps a very great and painful effort which you are not disposed to make; but this is a world of effort you know, Fanny, and we must never yield, when so much depends upon us. Come! Try! I must really scold you if you don't!"

The race in the ensuing pause was fierce and furious. The watches seemed to jostle, and to trip each other up.

"Fanny!" said Louisa, glancing round, with a gathering alarm. "Only look at me. Only open your eyes to show me that you hear and understand me; will you? Good Heaven, gentlemen, what is to be done!"

The two medical attendants exchanged a look across the bed; and the Physician, stooping down, whispered in the child's ear. Not having understood the purport of his whisper, the little creature turned her perfectly colorless face, and deep dark eyes towards him: but without loosening her hold in the least.

The whisper was repeated.

"Mama!" said the child.

The little voice, familiar and dearly loved, awakened some show of consciousness, even at that ebb. For a moment, the closed eye-lids trembled, and the nostril quivered, and the faintest shadow of a smile was seen.

"Mama!" cried the child sobbing aloud. "Oh dear Mama! oh dear Mama!"

The Doctor gently brushed the scattered ringlets of the child, aside from the face and mouth of the mother. Alas how calm they lay there; how little breath there was to stir them!

Thus, clinging fast to that slight spar within her arms, the mother drifted out upon the dark and unknown sea that rolls round all the world.

CHAPTER II.

IN WHICH TIMELY PROVISION IS MADE FOR AN EMERGENCY THAT WILL SOMETIMES ARISE IN THE BEST REGULATED FAMILIES.

"I SHALL never cease to congratulate myself," said Mrs. Chick, "on having said, when I little thought what was in store for us,-really as if I was inspired by something, that I for. gave poor dear Fanny everything. Whatever happens, that must always be a comfort to me!"

Mrs. Chick made this impressive observation in the drawingroom, after having descended thither from the inspection of the Mantua-Makers up stairs, who were busy on the family mourn ing. She delivered it for the behoof of Mr. Chick, who was a stout bald gentleman, with a very large face, and his hands continually in his pockets, and who had a tendency in his nature. to whistle and hum tunes, which, sensible of the indecorum of such sounds in a house of grief, he was at some pains to repress at present.

66

"Don't you over-exert yourself, Loo," said Mr. Chick, “ or you'll be laid up with spasms, I see. Right tol loor rul! Bless my soul, I forgot! We're here one day and gone the next!"

Mrs. Chick contented herself with a glance of reproof, and then proceeded with the thread of her discourse.

"I am sure," she said, "I hope this heart-rending occurrence will be a warning to all of us, to accustom ourselves to rouse ourselves, and to make efforts in time where they're required of us. There's a moral in everything, if we would only avail ourselves of it. It will be our own faults if we lose sight of this one.'

Mr. Chick invaded the grave silence which ensued on this remark with the singularly inappropriate air of A cobbler there was ;' and checking himself, in some confusion, observed, that it was undoubtedly our own faults if we didn't improve such melancholy occasions as the present.

"Which might be better improved, I should think, Mr. C.," retorted his helpmate, after a short pause, " than by the introduction, either of the college hornpipe, or the equally unmeaning and unfeeling remark of rump-te-iddity, bow-wow-wow!"

-which Mr. Chick had indeed indulged in, under his breath, and which Mrs. Chick repeated in a tone of withering scorn. "Merely habit, my dear," pleaded Mr. Chick. "Nonsense! Habit! returned his wife. rational being, don't make such ridiculous excuses. If I was to get a habit (as you call it) of walking on the ceiling, like the flies, I should hear enough of it, I dare say."

"If you're a

Habit!

It appeared so probable that such a habit might be attended with some degree of notoriety, that Mr. Chick didn't venture to dispute the position.

"How's the Baby, Loo?" asked Mr. Chick: to change the subject.

"What Baby do you mean?" answered Mrs. Chick, "I am sure the morning I have had, with that dining-room down stairs one mass of babies, no one in their senses would believe."

"One mass of babies!" repeated Mr. Chick, staring with an alarmed expression about him.

"It would have occurred to most men," said Mrs. Chick, "that poor dear Fanny being no more, it becomes necessary to provide a Nurse.”

"Oh! Ah!" said Mr. Chick. "Toor-rul-such is life, I mean. I hope you are suited, my dear."

"Indeed I am not," said Mrs. Chick; "nor likely to be, so far as I can see. Meanwhile, of course, the child is-"

"Going to the very Deuce," said Mr. Chick thoughtfully, "to be sure."

Admonished, however, that he had committed himself, by the indignation expressed in Mrs. Chick's countenance at the idea of a Dombey going there; and thinking to atone for his misconduct by a bright suggestion, he added:

"Couldn't something temporary be done with a teapot?" If he had meant to bring the subject prematurely to a close, he could not have done it more effectually. After looking at him for some moments in silent resignation, Mrs. Chick walked majestically to the window and peeped through the blind attracted by the sound of wheels. Mr. Chick, finding that his destiny was, for the time, against him, said no more, and walked off. But it was not always thus with Mr. Chick. He was often in the ascendant himself, and at those times punished Louisa roundly. In their matrimonial bickerings they were, upon the whole, a well-matched, fairly-balanced, give-and-take couple. It would have been, generally speaking, very difficult to have bet ted on the winner. Often when Mr. Chick seemed beaten, he

would suddenly make a start, turn the tables, clatter them about the ears of Mrs. Chick, and carry all before him. Being liable himself to similar unlooked-for checks from Mrs. Chick, their little contests usually possessed a character of uncertainty that was very animating.

Miss Tox had arrived on the wheels just now alluded to, and came running into the room in a breathless condition. "My dear Louisa," said Miss Tox, "is the vacancy still unsupplied?"

"You good soul, yes," said Mrs. Chick.

“Then, my dear Louisa," returned Miss Tox, "I hope and believe-but in one moment, my dear, I'll introduce the party." Running down stairs again as fast as she had run up, Miss Tox got the party out of the hackney-coach, and soon returned with it under convoy.

It then appeared that she had used the word, not in its legal or business acceptation, when it merely expresses an individual, but as a noun of multitude, or signifying many for Miss Tox escorted a plump rosy-cheeked wholesome applefaced young woman, with an infant in her arms; a younger woman not so plump, but apple-faced also, who led a plump and apple-faced child in each hand: another plump and also apple-faced boy who walked by himself; and finally, a plump. and apple-faced man, who carried in his arms another plump and apple-faced boy, whom he stood down on the floor, and admonished, in a husky whisper, to "kitch hold of his brother Johnny."

"My dear Louisa," said Miss Tox, "knowing your great anxiety, and wishing to relieve it, I posted off myself to the Queen Charlotte's Royal Married Females, which you had forgot, and put the question, Was there anybody there that they thought would suit? No, they said there was not. When they gave me that answer, I do assure you, my dear, I was almost driven to despair on your account. But it did so happen, that one of the Royal Married Females, hearing the inquiry, reminded the matron of another who had gone to her own home, and who, she said, would in all likehood be most satisfactory. The moment I heard this, and had it corroborated by the matron-excellent references and unimpeachable char acter-I got the address, my dear, and posted off again."

"Like the dear good Tox, you are!" said Louisa. "Not at all," returned Miss Tox. "Dont' say so. Arriving at the house (the cleanest place, my dear! You might eat your dinner off the floor), I found the whole family sitting at