"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 pen-woman-by 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.

66

"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 reendorse 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

"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.

66

"In the West Indies. At Barbados. 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 Barbados. 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 something 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 parlor, 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 away too, Walter felt that his lingering any longer would be an unpardonable intrusion— especially 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 lose 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 mean 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 harmonize 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."

one

He who was

During this conversation, Walter had looked from brother to the other with pain and amazement. the Senior in years, and Junior in the house, stood, with his eyes cast upon the ground, and his head bowed, humbly listening to the reproaches of the other. Though these were rendered very bitter by the tone and look with which they were accompanied, and by the presence of Walter whom they so much surprised and shocked, he entered no other protest against them than by slightly raising his right hand in a deprecatory manner, as if he would have said, "Spare me!" So, had they

been blows, and he a brave man, under strong constraint, and weakened by bodily suffering, he might have stood before the executioner.

Generous and quick in all his emotions, and regarding himself as the innocent occasion of these taunts, Walter now struck in, with all the earnestness he felt.

"Mr. Carker," he said, addressing himself to the Manager. "Indeed, indeed, this is my fault solely. In a kind of heedlessness, for which I cannot blame myself enough, I have, I have no doubt, mentioned Mr. Carker the Junior much oftener than was necessary; and have allowed his name sometimes to slip through my lips, when it was against your express wish. But it has been my own mistake, Sir. We have never exchanged one word upon the subject-very few, indeed, on any subject. And it has not been," added Walter, after a moment's pause, "all heedlessness on my part, Sir; for I have felt an interest in Mr. Carker ever since I have been here, and have hardly been able to help speaking of him sometimes, when I have thought of him so much!"

Walter said this from his soul, and with the very breath of honor. For he looked upon the bowed head, and the downcast eyes, and upraised hand, and thought, "I have felt it; and why should I not avow it in behalf of this unfriended, broken man!"

"In truth, you have avoided me, Mr. Carker," said Walter, with the tears rising to his eyes; so true was his compassion. "I know it, to my disappointment and regret. When I first came here, and ever since, I am sure I have tried to be as much your friend, as one of my age could presume to be; but it has been of no use."

"And observe," said the Manager, taking him up quickly, "it will be of still less use, Gay, if you persist in forcing Mr. John Carker's name on people's attention. That is not the way to befriend Mr. John Carker. Ask him if he thinks it is."

"It is no service to me," said the brother. "It only leads to such a conversation as the present, which I need not say I could have well spared. No one can be a better friend to me: he spoke here very distinctly, as if he would impress it upon Walter: "than in forgetting me, and leaving me to go my way, unquestioned and unnoticed."

"Your memory not being retentive, Gay, of what you are told by others," said Mr. Carker the Manager, warming himself with great and increased satisfaction, "I thought it well that you should be told this from the best authority," nodding

towards his brother. "You are not likely to forget it now, I hope. That's all, Gay. You can go."

Walter passed out at the door, and was about to close it after him, when, hearing the voice of the brothers again, and also the mention of his own name, he stood irresolutely, with his hand upon the lock, and the door ajar, uncertain whether to return or go away. In this position he could not help overhearing what followed.

“Think of me more leniently, if you can, James," said John Carker, "when I tell you I have had-how could I help having, with my history, written here"-striking himself upon the breast" my whole heart awakened by my observation of that boy, Walter Gay. I saw in him when he first came here, almost my other self."

"Your other self!" repeated the Manager, disdainfully.

"Not as I am, but as I was when I first came here too; as sanguine, giddy, youthful, inexperienced; flushed with the same restless and adventurous fancies; and full of the same quali ties, fraught with the same capacity of leading on to good of evil."

"I hope not," said his brother, with some hidden and sarcastic meaning in his tone.

"You strike me sharply; and your hand is steady, and your thrust is very deep," returned the other, speaking (or so Walter thought) as if some cruel weapon actually stabbed him as he spoke. "I imagined all this when he was a boy. I believed it. It was a truth to me. I saw him lightly walking on the edge of an unseen gulf where so many others walk with equal gayety, and from which-"

"The old excuse," interrupted his brother, as he stirred the fire. "So many. Go on. Say, so many fall."

"From which ONE traveller fell," returned the other, "who set forward, on his way, a boy like him, and missed his footing more and more, and slipped a little and a little lower, and went on stumbling still, until he fell headlong and found himself below a shattered man. Think what I suffered, when I watched that boy."

"You have only yourself to thank for it," returned the brother.

"Only myself," he assented with a sigh. "I don't seek to divide the blame or shame.'

"You have divided the shame," James Carker muttered through his teeth. And through so many and such close teeth he could mutter well.