to school himself."

"Well!" said Mr. Dombey, after looking at him attentively, and with no great favor, as he stood gaz

Mrs. Toodle seemed doubtful about it; and as to Toodle himself, he had evidently no doubt whatever, that he was all abroad."

"You have children of your own," said Mr. Dombey. "It is not at all in this bargain that you need become attached to my child, or that my child need become attached to you. I don't expect or desire any thing of the kind. Quite the reverse. When you go away from here, you will have concluded what is a mere matter of bargain and sale, hiring and letting; and will stay away. The child will cease to remember you; and you will cease, if you please, to remember the child."

Mrs. Toodle, with a little more color in her cheeks than she had had before, said "she hoped she knew her place."

"I hope you do, Richards," said Mr. Dombey. "I have no doubt you know it very well. Indeed it is so plain and obvious that it could hardly be otherwise. Louisa, my dear, arrange with Richards about money, and let her have it when and how she pleases. Mr. What's your-name, a word with you, if you please!"

Thus arrested on the threshold as he was following his wife out of the room, Toodle returned and confronted Mr. Dombey alone. He was a strong, loose, round-shouldered, shuffling, shaggy fellow, on whom his clothes sat negligently: with a good deal of hair and whisker, deepened in its natural tint, perhaps by smoke and coal-dust: hard knotty hands: and a square forehead, as coarse in grain as the bark of an oak. A thorough contrast in all respects to Mr. Dombey, who was one of those close-shaved closecut moneyed gentlemen who are glossy and crisp like new bank-notes, and who seem to be artificially braced and tightened as by the stimulating action of golden shower-baths.

"You have a son, I believe?" said Mr. Dombey. "Four on 'em, sir. Four hims and a her. All alive!"

"Why, it's as much as you can afford to keep them!" said Mr. Dombey.

"I couldn't hardly afford but one thing in the world less, sir."

"What is that?"

"To lose 'em, sir."

"Can you read ?" asked Mr. Dombey.

"Why, not partick'ler, sir."

"Write?"

"With chalk, sir?"

"With any thing?"

"I could make shift to chalk a little bit, I think, if I was put to it," said Toodle, after some reflection. "And yet," said Mr. Dombey," you are two or three and thirty, I suppose?"

"Thereabout, I suppose, sir," answered Toodle, after more reflection.

"Then why don't you learn?" asked Mr. Dombey. "So I'm agoing to, sir. One of my little boys is

and still drawing his hand across and across his mouth. "You heard what I said to your wife just now?"

"Polly heerd it," said Toodle, jerking his hat over his shoulder in the direction of the door, with an air of perfect confidence in his better half. "It's all right."

"As you appear to leave every thing to her," said Mr. Dombey, frustrated in his intention of impressing his views still more distinctly on the husband, as the stronger character, “I suppose it is of no use my saying any thing to you."

"Not a bit," said Toodle. awake, sir."

"Polly heerd it. She's

"I won't detain you any longer then," returned Mr. Dombey, disappointed. "Where have you worked all your life?"

"Mostly underground, sir, 'till I got married. I come to the level then. I'm agoing on one of these here railroads when they comes into full play."

As the last straw breaks the laden camel's back, this piece of underground information crushed the sinking spirits of Mr. Dombey. He motioned his child's foster-father to the door, who departed by no means unwillingly: and then turning the key, paced up and down the room in solitary wretchedness. For all his starched, impenetrable dignity and composure, he wiped blinding tears from his eyes as he did so; and often said, with an emotion of which he would not, for the world, have had a witness, "Poor little fellow!"

It may have been characteristic of Mr. Dombey's pride, that he pitied himself through the child. Not poor me. Not poor widower, confiding by constraint in the wife of an ignorant Hind who has been working "mostly underground" all his life, and yet at whose door Death had never knocked, and at whose poor table four sons daily sit-but poor little fellow!

Those words being on his lips, it occurred to him --and it is an instance of the strong attraction with which his hopes and fears and all his thoughts were tending to one centre-that a great temptation was being placed in this woman's way. Her infant was a boy too. Now, would it be possible for her to change them?

Though he was soon satisfied that he had dismissed the idea as romantic and unlikely-though possible, there was no denying-he could not help pursuing it so far as to entertain within himself a picture of what his condition would be, if he should discover such an imposture when he was grown old. Whether a man so situated would be able to pluck away the result of so many years of usage, confidence, and belief, from the impostor, and endow a stranger with it?

As his unusual emotion subsided, these misgivings gradually melted away, though so much of their shadow remained behind, that he was constant in his resolution to look closely after Richards himself, without appearing to do so. Being now in an easier frame of mind, he regarded the woman's station as rather an

advantageous circumstance than otherwise, by placing, in itself, a broad distance between her and the child, and rendering their separation easy and natural. Meanwhile terms were ratified and agreed upon between Mrs. Chick and Richards, with the assistance of Miss Tox; and Richards being with much ceremony invested with the Dombey baby, as if it were an Order resigned her own, with many tears and kisses, to Jemima. Glasses of wine were then produced, to sustain the drooping spirits of the family.

"You'll take a glass yourself, sir, won't you?" said Miss Tox, as Toodle appeared.

"Thankee, mum," said Toodle, "since you are suppressing."

"And you're very glad to leave your dear good wife in such a comfortable home, ain't you, sir ?” said Miss Tox, nodding and winking at him stealthily.

"No, mum," said Toodle. "Here's wishing of her back agin."

Polly cried more than ever at this. So Mrs. Chick, who had her matronly apprehensions that this indulgence in grief might be prejudicial to the little Dombey ("acid, indeed," she whispered Miss Tox), hastened to the rescue.

"Your little child will thrive charmingly with your sister Jemima, Richards," said Mrs. Chick; "and you have only to make an effort this is a world of effort, you know, Richards-to be very happy indeed. You have been already measured for your mourning, haven't you, Richards?"

"Ye-es, ma'am," sobbed Polly.

"And it'll fit beautifully, I know," said Mrs. Chick, "for the same young person has made me many dressThe very best materials, too!"

es.

"Lor, you'll be so smart," said Miss Tox, "that your husband won't know you; will you, sir?"

"I should know her," said Toodle, gruffly, "anyhows and anywheres."

Toodle was evidently not to be bought over.

"As to living, Richards, you know," pursued Mrs. Chick, "why the very best of every thing will be at your disposal. You will order your little dinner every day; and any thing you take a fancy to, I'm sure will be as readily provided as if you were a Lady."

"Yes, to be sure!" said Miss Tox, keeping up the ball with great sympathy. "And as to porter!— quite unlimited, will it not, Louisa ?"

"Oh, certainly!" returned Mrs. Chick in the same tone. "With a little abstinence, you know, my dear, in point of vegetables."

"And pickles, perhaps," suggested Miss Tox. "With such exceptions," said Louisa, "she'll consult her choice entirely, and be under no restraint at all, my love."

"And then, of course, you know," said Miss Tox, "however fond she is of her own dear little childand I'm sure, Louisa, you don't blame her for being fond of it?"

"Oh no!" cried Mrs. Chick, benignantly. "Still," resumed Miss Tox, "she naturally must be interested in her young charge, and must consider it a privilege to see a little cherub closely connected with the superior classes, gradually unfolding itself from day to day at one common fountain. Is it not so, Louisa ?"

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"Most undoubtedly!" said Mrs. Chick. "You see, my love, she's already quite contented and comfortable, and means to say good-bye to her sister Jemima and her little pets, and her good honest husband, with a light heart and a smile; don't she, my dear!" "Oh yes!" cried Miss Tox, "to be sure she does!" Notwithstanding which, however, poor Polly embraced them all round in great distress, and finally ran away to avoid any more particular leave-taking between herself and the children. But the stratagem hardly succeeded as well as it deserved; for the smallest boy but one divining her intent, immediately began swarming up stairs after her-if that word of doubtful etymology be admissible-on his arms and legs; while the eldest (known in the family by the name of Biler, in remembrance of the steam-engine) beat a demoniacal tattoo with his boots, expressive of grief; in which he was joined by the rest of the family.

The

A quantity of oranges and half-pence thrust indiscriminately on each young Toodle, checked the first violence of their regret, and the family were speedily transported to their own home, by means of the hackney-coach kept in waiting for that purpose. children, under the guardianship of Jemima, blocked up the window, and dropped out oranges and halfpence all the way along. Mr. Toodle himself preferred to ride behind among the spikes, as being the mode of conveyance to which he was best accustomed.

CHAPTER III.

IN WHICH MR. DOMBEY, AS A MAN AND A FATHER, IS SEEN AT THE HEAD OF THE HOME DEPARTMENT,

THE

HE funeral of the deceased lady having been "performed" to the entire satisfaction of the undertaker, as well as of the neighborhood at large, which is generally disposed to be captious on such a point, and is prone to take offense at any omissions or shortcomings in the ceremonies, the various members of Mr. Dombey's household subsided into their several places in the domestic system. That small world, like the great one out-of-doors, had the capacity of easily forgetting its dead; and when the cook had said she was a quiet - tempered lady, and the housekeeper had said it was the common lot, and the butler had said who'd have thought it, and the housemaid had said she couldn't hardly believe it, and the footman had said it seemed exactly like a dream, they had quite worn the subject out, and began to think their mourning was wearing rusty too.

On Richards, who was established up stairs in a state of honorable captivity, the dawn of her new life seemed to break cold and gray. Mr. Dombey's house was a large one, on the shady side of a tall, dark, dreadfully genteel street in the region between Portland Place and Bryanstone Square. It was a corner house, with great wide areas containing cellars frowned upon by barred windows, and leered at by crooked-eyed doors leading to dust-bins. It was a house of dismal state, with a circular back to it, containing a whole suit of drawing-rooms looking upon a graveled yard, where two gaunt trees, with blackened trunks and branches, rattled rather than

rustled, their leaves were so smoke-dried. The summer sun was never on the street, but in the morning about breakfast-time, when it came with the watercarts and the old-clothes-men, and the people with geraniums, and the umbrella-mender, and the man who trilled the little bell of the Dutch clock as he went along. It was soon gone again to return no more that day; and the bands of music and the straggling Punch's shows going after it, left it a prey to the most dismal of organs, and white mice; with now and then a porcupine, to vary the entertainments; until the butlers, whose families were dining out, began to stand at the house-doors in the twilight, and the lamp-lighter made his nightly failure in attempting to brighten up the street with gas.

It was as blank a house inside as outside. When the funeral was over, Mr. Dombey ordered the furniture to be covered up—perhaps to preserve it for the son with whom his plans were all associated-and the rooms to be ungarnished, saving such as he retained for himself on the ground-floor. Accordingly, mysterious shapes were made of tables and chairs, heaped together in the middle of rooms, and covered over with great winding-sheets. Bell-handles, window-blinds, and looking-glasses, being papered up in journals, daily and weekly, obtruded fragmentary accounts of deaths and dreadful murders. Every chandelier or lustre, muffled in holland, looked like a monstrous tear depending from the ceiling's eye. Odors, as from vaults and damp places, came out of the chimneys. The dead and buried lady was awful in a picture-frame of ghastly bandages. Every gust of wind that rose, brought eddying round the corner from the neighboring mews, some fragments of the straw that had been strewn before the house when she was ill, mildewed remains of which were still cleaving to the neighborhood; and these, being always drawn by some invisible attraction to the threshold of the dirty house to let immediately opposite, addressed a dismal eloquence to Mr. Dombey's windows.

The apartments which Mr. Dombey reserved for his own inhabiting, were attainable from the hall, and consisted of a sitting-room; a library, which was in fact a dressing-room, so that the smell of hotpressed paper, vellum, morocco, and Russia leather, contended in it with the smell of divers pairs of boots; and a kind of conservatory or little glass breakfast-room beyond, commanding a prospect of the trees before mentioned, and, generally speaking, of a few prowling cats. These three rooms opened upon one another. In the morning, when Mr. Dombey was at his breakfast in one or other of the two first-mentioned of them, as well as in the afternoon when he came home to dinner, a bell was rung for Richards to repair to this glass chamber, and there walk to and fro with her young charge. From the glimpses she caught of Mr. Dombey at these times, sitting in the dark distance, looking out toward the infant from among the dark heavy furniture-the house had been inhabited for years by his father, and in many of its appointments was old-fashioned and grim-she began to entertain ideas of him in his solitary state, as if he were a lone prisoner in a cell, or a strange apparition that was not to be accosted or understood.

Little Paul Dombey's foster-mother had led this life herself, and had carried little Paul through it for some weeks; and had returned up stairs one day from a melancholy saunter through the dreary rooms of state (she never went out without Mrs. Chick, who called on fine mornings, usually accompanied by Miss Tox, to take her and Baby for an airing-or, in other words, to march them gravely up and down the pavement; like a walking funeral); when, as she was sitting in her own room, the door was slowly and quietly opened, and a dark-eyed little girl looked in.

"It's Miss Florence come home from her aunt's, no doubt," thought Richards, who had never seen the child before. "Hope I see you well, miss."

"Is that my brother?" asked the child, pointing to the Baby. "Come

"Yes, my pretty," answered Richards. and kiss him."

But the child, instead of advancing, looked her earnestly in the face, and said:

"What have you done with my mamma?" "Lord bless the little creetur!" cried Richards, "what a sad question! I done? Nothing, miss." "What have they done with my mamma ?” inquired the child.

"I never saw such a melting thing in all my life!" said Richards, who naturally substituted for this child one of her own, inquiring for herself in like circumstances. "Come nearer here, my dear miss! Don't be afraid of me."

"I am not afraid of you," said the child, drawing nearer. "But I want to know what they have done with my mamma."

"My darling," said Richards, "you wear that pretty black frock in remembrance of your mamma." "I can remember my mamma," returned the child, with tears springing to her eyes, "in any frock." "But people put on black, to remember people when they're gone.”

"Where gone?" asked the child.

"Come and sit down by me," said Richards, " and I'll tell you a story."

With a quick perception that it was intended to relate to what she had asked, little Florence laid aside the bonnet she had held in her hand until now, and sat down on a stool at the nurse's feet, looking up into her face.

"Once upon a time," said Richards, "there was a lady-a very good lady, and her little daughter dearly loved her."

"A very good lady and her little daughter dearly loved her,", repeated the child.

66

Who, when God thought it right that it should be so, was taken ill and died." The child shuddered.

"Died, never to be seen again by any one on earth, and was buried in the ground where the trees grow."

"The cold ground?" said the child, shuddering again.

"No! The warm ground," returned Polly, seizing her advantage, "where the ugly little seeds turn into beautifui flowers, and into grass, and corn, and I don't know what ail besides. Where good people turn into bright angels, and fly away to Heaven!"

The child, who had drooped her head, raised it again, and sat looking at her intently.

"So; let me see," said Polly, not a little flurried between this earnest scrutiny, her desire to comfort the child, her sudden success, and her very slight confidence in her own powers. "So, when this lady died, wherever they took her, or wherever they put her, she went to GOD! and she prayed to Him, this lady did," said Polly, affecting herself beyond measure; being heartily in earnest, "to teach her little daughter to be sure of that in her heart: and to know that she was happy there and loved her still: and to hope and try-oh, all her life-to meet her there one day, never, never, never to part any more." "It was my mamma!" exclaimed the child, springing up, and clasping her round the neck.

"And the child's heart," said Polly, drawing her to her breast: "the little daughter's heart was so full of the truth of this, that even when she heard it from a strange nurse that couldn't tell it right, but was a poor mother herself and that was all, she found a comfort in it—didn't feel so lonely-sobbed | and cried upon her bosom-took kindly to the baby lying in her lap-and-there, there, there!" said Polly, smoothing the child's curls and dropping tears upon them. "There, poor dear!"

"Oh well, Miss Floy! And won't your pa be an gry neither!" cried a quick voice at the door, proceeding from a short, brown, womanly girl of fourteen, with a little snub nose, and black eyes like jet beads. "When it was 'tickerlerly given out that you wasn't to go and worrit the wet-nurse."

"She don't worry me," was the surprised rejoinder of Polly. "I am very fond of children."

"Oh! but begging your pardon, Mrs. Richards, that don't matter, you know," returned the blackeyed girl, who was so desperately sharp and biting that she seemed to make one's eyes water. be very fond of pennywinkles, Mrs. Richards, but it don't follow that I'm to have 'em for tea."

"Well, it don't matter," said Polly.

"I may

"Oh, thank'ee, Mrs. Richards, don't it!" returned the sharp girl. "Remembering, however, if you'll be so good, that Miss Floy's under my charge, and Master Paul's under your'n."

"But still we needn't quarrel," said Polly,

"Oh no, Mrs. Richards," rejoined Spitfire. "Not at all, I don't wish it, we needn't stand upon that footing, Miss Floy being a permanency, Master Paul a temporary." Spitfire made use of none but comma pauses; shooting out whatever she had to say in one sentence, and in one breath, if possible.

"Miss Florence has just come home, hasn't she?" asked Polly.

"Yes, Mrs. Richards, just come, and here, Miss Floy, before you've been in the house a quarter of an hour, you go a-smearing your wet face against the expensive mourning that Mrs. Richards is a-wearing for your ma!" With this remonstrance, young Spitfire, whose real name was Susan Nipper, detached the child from her new friend by a wrench-as if she were a tooth. But she seemed to do it, more in the excessively sharp exercise of her official functions, than with any deliberate unkindness.

"She'll be quite happy, now she has come home again," said Polly, nodding to her with an encour

17

aging smile upon her wholesome face, "and will be so pleased to see her dear papa to-night."

"Lork, Mrs. Richards!" cried Miss Nipper, taking up her words with a jerk. "Don't. See her dear papa indeed! I should like to see her do it!" "Won't she then?" asked Polly.

"Lork, Mrs. Richards, no, her pa's a deal too wrapped up in somebody else, and before there was a somebody else to be wrapped up in she never was a favorite, girls are thrown away in this house, Mrs. Richards, I assure you."

The child looked quickly from one nurse to the other, as if she understood and felt what was said. "You surprise me!" cried Polly. "Hasn't Mr. Dombey seen her since-"

"No," interrupted Susan Nipper. "Not once since, and he hadn't hardly set his eyes upon her before that for months and months, and I don't think he'd have known her for his own child if he had met her in the streets, or would know her for his own child if he was to meet her in the streets to-morrow, Mrs. Richards, as to me,” said Spitfire, with a giggle, "I doubt if he's aweer of my existence."

"Pretty dear!" said Richards; meaning, not Miss Nipper, but the little Florence.

"Oh! there's a Tartar within a hundred miles of where we're now in conversation, I can tell you, Mrs. Richards, present company always excepted too," said Susan Nipper; "wish you good-morning, Mrs. Richards, now Miss Floy, you come along with me, and don't go hanging back like a naughty wicked child that judgments is no example to, don't."

In spite of being thus adjured, and in spite also of some hauling on the part of Susan Nipper, tending toward the dislocation of her right shoulder, little Florence broke away, and kissed her new friend, affectionately.

"Good-bye!" said the child. "God bless you! I shall come to see you again soon, and you'll come to see me? Susan will let us. Won't you, Susan ?"

Spitfire seemed to be in the main a good-natured little body, although a disciple of that school of trainers of the young idea which holds that childhood, like money, must be shaken and rattled and jostled about a good deal to keep it bright. For, being thus appealed to with some endearing gestures and caresses, she folded her small arms and shook her head, and conveyed a relenting expression into her very-wide-open black eyes.

"It ain't right of you to ask it, Miss Floy, for you know I can't refuse you, but Mrs. Richards and me will see what can be done, if Mrs. Richards likes, I may wish, you see, to take a voyage to Chaney, Mrs. Richards, but I mayn't know how to leave the London Docks."

Richards assented to the proposition.

"This house ain't so exactly ringing with merrymaking," said Miss Nipper, "that one need be lonelier than one must be. Your Toxes and your Chickses may draw out my two front double teeth, Mrs. Richards, but that's no reason why I need offer 'em the whole set."

This proposition was also assented to by Richards, as an obvious one.

"So I'm agreeable, I'm sure," said Susan Nipper, "to live friendly, Mrs. Richards, while Master Paul

continues a permanency, if the means can be planned out without going openly against orders, but goodness gracious ME, Miss Floy, you haven't got your things off yet, you naughty child, you haven't, come along!"

With these words, Susan Nipper, in a transport of coercion, made a charge at her young ward, and swept her out of the room.

The child, in her grief and neglect, was so gentle, so quiet, and uncomplaining; was possessed of so much affection that no one seemed to care to have, and so much sorrowful intelligence that no one seemed to mind or think about the wounding of; that Polly's heart was sore when she was left alone again. In the simple passage that had taken place between herself and the motherless little girl, her own motherly heart had been touched no less than the child's; and she felt, as the child did, that there was some thing of confidence and interest between them from that moment.

Notwithstanding Mr. Toodle's great reliance on Polly, she was perhaps in point of artificial accomplishments very little his superior. But she was a good plain sample of a nature that is ever, in the mass, better, truer, higher, nobler, quicker to feel, and much more constant to retain, all tenderness and pity, self-denial and devotion, than the nature of And, perhaps, unlearned as she was, she could have brought a dawning knowledge home to Mr. Dombey at that early day, which would not then have struck him in the end like lightning.

men.

But this is from the purpose. Polly only thought, at that time, of improving on her successful propitiation of Miss Nipper, and devising some means of having little Florence beside her, lawfully, and without rebellion. An opening happened to present itself that very night.

She had been rung down into the glass room as usual, and had walked about and about it a long time with the baby in her arms, when, to her great surprise and dismay, Mr. Dombey came out, suddenly, and stopped before her.

"Good-evening, Richards."

Just the same austere, stiff gentleman, as he had appeared to her on that first day. Such a hard-looking gentleman, that she involuntarily dropped her eyes and her courtesy at the same time.

"How is Master Paul, Richards?" "Quite thriving, sir, and well.”

"He looks so," said Mr. Dombey, glancing with great interest at the tiny face she uncovered for his observation, and yet affecting to be half careless of it. "They give you every thing you want, I hope?" "Oh yes, thank you, sir."

She suddenly appended such an obvious hesitation so this reply, however, that Mr. Dombey, who had turned away, stopped, and turned round again, inquiringly.

"I believe nothing is so good for making children lively and cheerful, sir, as seeing other children playing about 'em," observed Polly, taking courage.

"I think I mentioned to you, Richards, when you came here," said Mr. Dombey, with a frown, "that I wished you to see as little of your family as possible. You can continue your walk, if you please."

With that, he disappeared into his inner room;

and Polly had the satisfaction of feeling that he had thoroughly misunderstood her object, and that she had fallen into disgrace without the least advancement of her purpose.

Next night, she found him walking about the conservatory when she came down. As she stopped at the door, checked by this unusual sight, and uncertain whether to advance or retreat, he called her in.

66

If you really think that sort of society is good for the child," he said, sharply, as if there had been no interval since she proposed it, "where's Miss Florence ?"

"Nothing could be better than Miss Florence, sir," said Polly, eagerly, "but I understood from her little maid that they were not to-"

Mr. Dombey rang the bell, and walked till it was answered.

"Tell them always to let Miss Florence be with Richards when she chooses, and go out with her, and so forth. Tell them to let the children be together, when Richards wishes it."

The iron was now hot, and Richards striking on it boldly-it was a good cause and she was bold in it, though instinctively afraid of Mr. Dombey-requested that Miss Florence might be sent down then and there, to make friends with her little brother.

She feigned to be dandling the child as the servant retired on this errand, but she thought that she saw Mr. Dombey's color changed, that the expression of his face quite altered; that he turned, hurriedly, as if to gainsay what he had said, or she had said, or both, and was only deterred by very shame.

And she was right. The last time he had seen his slighted child, there had been that in the sad embrace between her and her dying mother, which was at once a revelation and a reproach to him. Let him be absorbed as he would in the Son on whom he built such high hopes, he could not forget that closing scene. He could not forget that he had had no part in it. That, at the bottom of its clear depths of tenderness and truth, lay those two figures clasped in each other's arms, while he stood on the bank above them, looking down a mere spectator—not a sharer with them-quite shut out.

Unable to exclude these things from his remembrance, or to keep his mind free from such imperfect shapes of the meaning with which they were fraught, as were able to make themselves visible to him through the mist of his pride, his previous feelings of indifference toward little Florence changed into an uneasiness of an extraordinary kind. He almost felt as if she watched and distrusted him. As if she held the clue to something secret in his breast, of the nature of which he was hardly informed himself. As if she had an innate knowledge of one jarring and discordant string within him, and her very breath could sound it.