The Honourable Mrs Skewton and her daughter, Mrs Granger, resided, while at Leamington, in lodgings that were fashionable enough and dear enough, but rather limited in point of space and conveniences; so that the Honourable Mrs Skewton, being in bed, had her feet in the window and her head in the fireplace, while the Honourable Mrs Skewton’s maid was quartered in a closet within the drawing-room, so extremely small, that, to avoid developing the whole of its accommodations, she was obliged to writhe in and out of the door like a beautiful serpent. Withers, the wan page, slept out of the house immediately under the tiles at a neighbouring milk-shop; and the wheeled chair, which was the stone of that young Sisyphus, passed the night in a shed belonging to the same dairy, where new-laid eggs were produced by the poultry connected with the establishment, who roosted on a broken donkey-cart, persuaded, to all appearance, that it grew there, and was a species of tree.
Mr Dombey and the Major found Mrs Skewton arranged, as Cleopatra, among the cushions of a sofa: very airily dressed; and certainly not resembling Shakespeare’s Cleopatra, whom age could not wither. On their way upstairs they had heard the sound of a harp, but it had ceased on their being announced, and Edith now stood beside it handsomer and haughtier than ever. It was a remarkable characteristic of this lady’s beauty that it appeared to vaunt and assert itself without her aid, and against her will. She knew that she was beautiful: it was impossible that it could be otherwise: but she seemed with her own pride to defy her very self.
Whether she held cheap attractions that could only call forth admiration that was worthless to her, or whether she designed to render them more precious to admirers by this usage of them, those to whom they were precious seldom paused to consider.
‘I hope, Mrs Granger,’ said Mr Dombey, advancing a step towards her, ‘we are not the cause of your ceasing to play?’
‘You! oh no!’
‘Why do you not go on then, my dearest Edith?’ said Cleopatra.
‘I left off as I began – of my own fancy.’
The exquisite indifference of her manner in saying this: an indifference quite removed from dulness or insensibility, for it was pointed with proud purpose: was well set off by the carelessness with which she drew her hand across the strings, and came from that part of the room.
‘Do you know, Mr Dombey,’ said her languishing mother, playing with a hand-screen, ‘that occasionally my dearest Edith and myself actually almost differ – ’
‘Not quite, sometimes, Mama?’ said Edith.
‘Oh never quite, my darling! Fie, fie, it would break my heart,’ returned her mother, making a faint attempt to pat her with the screen, which Edith made no movement to meet, ‘ – about these old conventionalities of manner that are observed in little things? Why are we not more natural? Dear me! With all those yearnings, and gushings, and impulsive throbbings that we have implanted in our souls, and which are so very charming, why are we not more natural?’
Mr Dombey said it was very true, very true.
‘We could be more natural I suppose if we tried?’ said Mrs Skewton.
Mr Dombey thought it possible.
‘Devil a bit, Ma’am,’ said the Major. ‘We couldn’t afford it. Unless the world was peopled with J.B.‘s – tough and blunt old Joes, Ma’am, plain red herrings with hard roes, Sir – we couldn’t afford it. It wouldn’t do.’
‘You naughty Infidel,’ said Mrs Skewton, ‘be mute.’
‘Cleopatra commands,’ returned the Major, kissing his hand, ‘and Antony Bagstock obeys.’
‘The man has no sensitiveness,’ said Mrs Skewton, cruelly holding up the hand-screen so as to shut the Major out. ‘No sympathy. And what do we live for but sympathy! What else is so extremely charming! Without that gleam of sunshine on our cold cold earth,’ said Mrs Skewton, arranging her lace tucker, and complacently observing the effect of her bare lean arm, looking upward from the wrist, ‘how could we possibly bear it? In short, obdurate man!’ glancing at the Major, round the screen, ‘I would have my world all heart; and Faith is so excessively charming, that I won’t allow you to disturb it, do you hear?’
The Major replied that it was hard in Cleopatra to require the world to be all heart, and yet to appropriate to herself the hearts of all the world; which obliged Cleopatra to remind him that flattery was insupportable to her, and that if he had the boldness to address her in that strain any more, she would positively send him home.
Withers the Wan, at this period, handing round the tea, Mr Dombey again addressed himself to Edith.
‘There is not much company here, it would seem?’ said Mr Dombey, in his own portentous gentlemanly way.
‘I believe not. We see none.’
‘Why really,’ observed Mrs Skewton from her couch, ‘there are no people here just now with whom we care to associate.’
‘They have not enough heart,’ said Edith, with a smile. The very twilight of a smile: so singularly were its light and darkness blended.
‘My dearest Edith rallies me, you see!’ said her mother, shaking her head: which shook a little of itself sometimes, as if the palsy twinkled now and then in opposition to the diamonds. ‘Wicked one!’
‘You have been here before, if I am not mistaken?’ said Mr Dombey. Still to Edith.
‘Oh, several times. I think we have been everywhere.’
‘A beautiful country!’
‘I suppose it is. Everybody says so.’
‘Your cousin Feenix raves about it, Edith,’ interposed her mother from her couch.
The daughter slightly turned her graceful head, and raising her eyebrows by a hair’s-breadth, as if her cousin Feenix were of all the mortal world the least to be regarded, turned her eyes again towards Mr Dombey.
‘I hope, for the credit of my good taste, that I am tired of the neighbourhood,’ she said.
‘You have almost reason to be, Madam,’ he replied, glancing at a variety of landscape drawings, of which he had already recognised several as representing neighbouring points of view, and which were strewn abundantly about the room, ‘if these beautiful productions are from your hand.’
She gave him no reply, but sat in a disdainful beauty, quite amazing.
‘Have they that interest?’ said Mr Dombey. ‘Are they yours?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you play, I already know.’
‘Yes.’
‘And sing?’
‘Yes.’
She answered all these questions with a strange reluctance; and with that remarkable air of opposition to herself, already noticed as belonging to her beauty. Yet she was not embarrassed, but wholly self-possessed. Neither did she seem to wish to avoid the conversation, for she addressed her face, and – so far as she could – her manner also, to him; and continued to do so, when he was silent.
‘You have many resources against weariness at least,’ said Mr Dombey.
‘Whatever their efficiency may be,’ she returned, ‘you know them all now. I have no more.’
‘May I hope to prove them all?’ said Mr Dombey, with solemn gallantry, laying down a drawing he had held, and motioning towards the harp.
‘Oh certainly! If you desire it!’
She rose as she spoke, and crossing by her mother’s couch, and directing a stately look towards her, which was instantaneous in its duration, but inclusive (if anyone had seen it) of a multitude of expressions, among which that of the twilight smile, without the smile itself, overshadowed all the rest, went out of the room.
The Major, who was quite forgiven by this time, had wheeled a little table up to Cleopatra, and was sitting down to play picquet with her. Mr Dombey, not knowing the game, sat down to watch them for his edification until Edith should return.
‘We are going to have some music, Mr Dombey, I hope?’ said Cleopatra.
‘Mrs Granger has been kind enough to promise so,’ said Mr Dombey.
‘Ah! That’s very nice. Do you propose, Major?’
‘No, Ma’am,’ said the Major. ‘Couldn’t do it.’
‘You’re a barbarous being,’ replied the lady, ‘and my hand’s destroyed. You are fond of music, Mr Dombey?’
‘Eminently so,’ was Mr Dombey’s answer.
‘Yes. It’s very nice,’ said Cleopatra, looking at her cards. ‘So much heart in it – undeveloped recollections of a previous state of existence – and all that – which is so truly charming. Do you know,’ simpered Cleopatra, reversing the knave of clubs, who had come into her game with his heels uppermost, ‘that if anything could tempt me to put a period to my life, it would be curiosity to find out what it’s all about, and what it means; there are so many provoking mysteries, really, that are hidden from us. Major, you to play!’
The Major played; and Mr Dombey, looking on for his instruction, would soon have been in a state of dire confusion, but that he gave no attention to the game whatever, and sat wondering instead when Edith would come back.
She came at last, and sat down to her harp, and Mr Dombey rose and stood beside her, listening. He had little taste for music, and no knowledge of the strain she played, but he saw her bending over it, and perhaps he heard among the sounding strings some distant music of his own, that tamed the monster of the iron road, and made it less inexorable.
Cleopatra had a sharp eye, verily, at picquet. It glistened like a bird’s, and did not fix itself upon the game, but pierced the room from end to end, and gleamed on harp, performer, listener, everything.
When the haughty beauty had concluded, she arose, and receiving Mr Dombey’s thanks and compliments in exactly the same manner as before, went with scarcely any pause to the piano, and began there.
Edith Granger, any song but that! Edith Granger, you are very handsome, and your touch upon the keys is brilliant, and your voice is deep and rich; but not the air that his neglected daughter sang to his dead son!
Alas, he knows it not; and if he did, what air of hers would stir him, rigid man! Sleep, lonely Florence, sleep! Peace in thy dreams, although the night has turned dark, and the clouds are gathering, and threaten to discharge themselves in hail!
CHAPTER 22. A Trifle of Management by Mr Carker the Manager
Mr Carker the Manager sat at his desk, smooth and soft as usual, reading those letters which were reserved for him to open, backing them occasionally with such memoranda and references as their business purport required, and parcelling them out into little heaps for distribution through the several departments of the House. The post had come in heavy that morning, and Mr Carker the Manager had a good deal to do.
The general action of a man so engaged – pausing to look over a bundle of papers in his hand, dealing them round in various portions, taking up another bundle and examining its contents with knitted brows and pursed-out lips – dealing, and sorting, and pondering by turns – would easily suggest some whimsical resemblance to a player at cards. The face of Mr Carker the Manager was in good keeping with such a fancy. It was the face of a man who studied his play, warily: who made himself master of all the strong and weak points of the game: who registered the cards in his mind as they fell about him, knew exactly what was on them, what they missed, and what they made: who was crafty to find out what the other players held, and who never betrayed his own hand.
The letters were in various languages, but Mr Carker the Manager read them all. If there had been anything in the offices of Dombey and Son that he could read, there would have been a card wanting in the pack. He read almost at a glance, and made combinations of one letter with another and one business with another as he went on, adding new matter to the heaps – much as a man would know the cards at sight, and work out their combinations in his mind after they were turned. Something too deep for a partner, and much too deep for an adversary, Mr Carker the Manager sat in the rays of the sun that came down slanting on him through the skylight, playing his game alone.
And although it is not among the instincts wild or domestic of the cat tribe to play at cards, feline from sole to crown was Mr Carker the Manager, as he basked in the strip of summer-light and warmth that shone upon his table and the ground as if they were a crooked dial-plate, and himself the only figure on it. With hair and whiskers deficient in colour at all times, but feebler than common in the rich sunshine, and more like the coat of a sandy tortoise-shell cat; with long nails, nicely pared and sharpened; with a natural antipathy to any speck of dirt, which made him pause sometimes and watch the falling motes of dust, and rub them off his smooth white hand or glossy linen: Mr Carker the Manager, sly of manner, sharp of tooth, soft of foot, watchful of eye, oily of tongue, cruel of heart, nice of habit, sat with a dainty steadfastness and patience at his work, as if he were waiting at a mouse’s hole.
At length the letters were disposed of, excepting one which he reserved for a particular audience. Having locked the more confidential correspondence in a drawer, Mr Carker the Manager rang his bell.
‘Why do you answer it?’ was his reception of his brother.
‘The messenger is out, and I am the next,’ was the submissive reply.
‘You are the next?’ muttered the Manager. ‘Yes! Creditable to me! There!’
Pointing to the heaps of opened letters, he turned disdainfully away, in his elbow-chair, and broke the seal of that one which he held in his hand.
‘I am sorry to trouble you, James,’ said the brother, gathering them up, ‘but – ’
‘Oh! you have something to say. I knew that. Well?’
Mr Carker the Manager did not raise his eyes or turn them on his brother, but kept them on his letter, though without opening it.
‘Well?’ he repeated sharply.
‘I am uneasy about Harriet.’
‘Harriet who? what Harriet? I know nobody of that name.’
‘She is not well, and has changed very much of late.’
‘She changed very much, a great many years ago,’ replied the Manager; ‘and that is all I have to say.
‘I think if you would hear me —
‘Why should I hear you, Brother John?’ returned the Manager, laying a sarcastic emphasis on those two words, and throwing up his head, but not lifting his eyes. ‘I tell you, Harriet Carker made her choice many years ago between her two brothers. She may repent it, but she must abide by it.’
‘Don’t mistake me. I do not say she does repent it. It would be black ingratitude in me to hint at such a thing,’ returned the other. ‘Though believe me, James, I am as sorry for her sacrifice as you.’
‘As I?’ exclaimed the Manager. ‘As I?’
‘As sorry for her choice – for what you call her choice – as you are angry at it,’ said the Junior.
‘Angry?’ repeated the other, with a wide show of his teeth.
‘Displeased. Whatever word you like best. You know my meaning. There is no offence in my intention.’
‘There is offence in everything you do,’ replied his brother, glancing at him with a sudden scowl, which in a moment gave place to a wider smile than the last. ‘Carry those papers away, if you please. I am busy.
His politeness was so much more cutting than his wrath, that the Junior went to the door. But stopping at it, and looking round, he said:
‘When Harriet tried in vain to plead for me with you, on your first just indignation, and my first disgrace; and when she left you, James, to follow my broken fortunes, and devote herself, in her mistaken affection, to a ruined brother, because without her he had no one, and was lost; she was young and pretty. I think if you could see her now – if you would go and see her – she would move your admiration and compassion.’
The Manager inclined his head, and showed his teeth, as who should say, in answer to some careless small-talk, ‘Dear me! Is that the case?’ but said never a word.
‘We thought in those days: you and I both: that she would marry young, and lead a happy and light-hearted life,’ pursued the other. ‘Oh if you knew how cheerfully she cast those hopes away; how cheerfully she has gone forward on the path she took, and never once looked back; you never could say again that her name was strange in your ears. Never!’
Again the Manager inclined his head and showed his teeth, and seemed to say, ‘Remarkable indeed! You quite surprise me!’ And again he uttered never a word.
‘May I go on?’ said John Carker, mildly.
‘On your way?’ replied his smiling brother. ‘If you will have the goodness.’
John Carker, with a sigh, was passing slowly out at the door, when his brother’s voice detained him for a moment on the threshold.
‘If she has gone, and goes, her own way cheerfully,’ he said, throwing the still unfolded letter on his desk, and putting his hands firmly in his pockets, ‘you may tell her that I go as cheerfully on mine. If she has never once looked back, you may tell her that I have, sometimes, to recall her taking part with you, and that my resolution is no easier to wear away;’ he smiled very sweetly here; ‘than marble.’
‘I tell her nothing of you. We never speak about you. Once a year, on your birthday, Harriet says always, “Let us remember James by name, and wish him happy,” but we say no more.’
‘Tell it then, if you please,’ returned the other, ‘to yourself. You can’t repeat it too often, as a lesson to you to avoid the subject in speaking to me. I know no Harriet Carker. There is no such person. You may have a sister; make much of her. I have none.’
Mr Carker the Manager took up the letter again, and waved it with a smile of mock courtesy towards the door. Unfolding it as his brother withdrew, and looking darkly after him as he left the room, he once more turned round in his elbow-chair, and applied himself to a diligent perusal of its contents.
It was in the writing of his great chief, Mr Dombey, and dated from Leamington. Though he was a quick reader of all other letters, Mr Carker read this slowly; weighing the words as he went, and bringing every tooth in his head to bear upon them. When he had read it through once, he turned it over again, and picked out these passages. ‘I find myself benefited by the change, and am not yet inclined to name any time for my return.’ ‘I wish, Carker, you would arrange to come down once and see me here, and let me know how things are going on, in person.’ ‘I omitted to speak to you about young Gay. If not gone per Son and Heir, or if Son and Heir still lying in the Docks, appoint some other young man and keep him in the City for the present. I am not decided.’ ‘Now that’s unfortunate!’ said Mr Carker the Manager, expanding his mouth, as if it were made of India-rubber: ‘for he’s far away.’
Still that passage, which was in a postscript, attracted his attention and his teeth, once more.
‘I think,’ he said, ‘my good friend Captain Cuttle mentioned something about being towed along in the wake of that day. What a pity he’s so far away!’
He refolded the letter, and was sitting trifling with it, standing it long-wise and broad-wise on his table, and turning it over and over on all sides – doing pretty much the same thing, perhaps, by its contents – when Mr Perch the messenger knocked softly at the door, and coming in on tiptoe, bending his body at every step as if it were the delight of his life to bow, laid some papers on the table.
‘Would you please to be engaged, Sir?’ asked Mr Perch, rubbing his hands, and deferentially putting his head on one side, like a man who felt he had no business to hold it up in such a presence, and would keep it as much out of the way as possible.
‘Who wants me?’
‘Why, Sir,’ said Mr Perch, in a soft voice, ‘really nobody, Sir, to speak of at present. Mr Gills the Ship’s Instrument-maker, Sir, has looked in, about a little matter of payment, he says: but I mentioned to him, Sir, that you was engaged several deep; several deep.’
Mr Perch coughed once behind his hand, and waited for further orders.
‘Anybody else?’
‘Well, Sir,’ said Mr Perch, ‘I wouldn’t of my own self take the liberty of mentioning, Sir, that there was anybody else; but that same young lad that was here yesterday, Sir, and last week, has been hanging about the place; and it looks, Sir,’ added Mr Perch, stopping to shut the door, ‘dreadful unbusiness-like to see him whistling to the sparrows down the court, and making of ‘em answer him.’
‘You said he wanted something to do, didn’t you, Perch?’ asked Mr Carker, leaning back in his chair and looking at that officer.
‘Why, Sir,’ said Mr Perch, coughing behind his hand again, ‘his expression certainly were that he was in wants of a sitiwation, and that he considered something might be done for him about the Docks, being used to fishing with a rod and line: but – ’ Mr Perch shook his head very dubiously indeed.
‘What does he say when he comes?’ asked Mr Carker.
‘Indeed, Sir,’ said Mr Perch, coughing another cough behind his hand, which was always his resource as an expression of humility when nothing else occurred to him, ‘his observation generally air that he would humbly wish to see one of the gentlemen, and that he wants to earn a living. But you see, Sir,’ added Perch, dropping his voice to a whisper, and turning, in the inviolable nature of his confidence, to give the door a thrust with his hand and knee, as if that would shut it any more when it was shut already, ‘it’s hardly to be bore, Sir, that a common lad like that should come a prowling here, and saying that his mother nursed our House’s young gentleman, and that he hopes our House will give him a chance on that account. I am sure, Sir,’ observed Mr Perch, ‘that although Mrs Perch was at that time nursing as thriving a little girl, Sir, as we’ve ever took the liberty of adding to our family, I wouldn’t have made so free as drop a hint of her being capable of imparting nourishment, not if it was never so!’
Mr Carker grinned at him like a shark, but in an absent, thoughtful manner.
‘Whether,’ submitted Mr Perch, after a short silence, and another cough, ‘it mightn’t be best for me to tell him, that if he was seen here any more he would be given into custody; and to keep to it! With respect to bodily fear,’ said Mr Perch, ‘I’m so timid, myself, by nature, Sir, and my nerves is so unstrung by Mrs Perch’s state, that I could take my affidavit easy.’
‘Let me see this fellow, Perch,’ said Mr Carker. ‘Bring him in!’
‘Yes, Sir. Begging your pardon, Sir,’ said Mr Perch, hesitating at the door, ‘he’s rough, Sir, in appearance.’
‘Never mind. If he’s there, bring him in. I’ll see Mr Gills directly. Ask him to wait.’
Mr Perch bowed; and shutting the door, as precisely and carefully as if he were not coming back for a week, went on his quest among the sparrows in the court. While he was gone, Mr Carker assumed his favourite attitude before the fire-place, and stood looking at the door; presenting, with his under lip tucked into the smile that showed his whole row of upper teeth, a singularly crouching apace.
The messenger was not long in returning, followed by a pair of heavy boots that came bumping along the passage like boxes. With the unceremonious words ‘Come along with you!’ – a very unusual form of introduction from his lips – Mr Perch then ushered into the presence a strong-built lad of fifteen, with a round red face, a round sleek head, round black eyes, round limbs, and round body, who, to carry out the general rotundity of his appearance, had a round hat in his hand, without a particle of brim to it.
Obedient to a nod from Mr Carker, Perch had no sooner confronted the visitor with that gentleman than he withdrew. The moment they were face to face alone, Mr Carker, without a word of preparation, took him by the throat, and shook him until his head seemed loose upon his shoulders.
The boy, who in the midst of his astonishment could not help staring wildly at the gentleman with so many white teeth who was choking him, and at the office walls, as though determined, if he were choked, that his last look should be at the mysteries for his intrusion into which he was paying such a severe penalty, at last contrived to utter —
‘Come, Sir! You let me alone, will you!’
‘Let you alone!’ said Mr Carker. ‘What! I have got you, have I?’ There was no doubt of that, and tightly too. ‘You dog,’ said Mr Carker, through his set jaws, ‘I’ll strangle you!’
Biler whimpered, would he though? oh no he wouldn’t – and what was he doing of – and why didn’t he strangle some – body of his own size and not him: but Biler was quelled by the extraordinary nature of his reception, and, as his head became stationary, and he looked the gentleman in the face, or rather in the teeth, and saw him snarling at him, he so far forgot his manhood as to cry.
‘I haven’t done nothing to you, Sir,’ said Biler, otherwise Rob, otherwise Grinder, and always Toodle.
‘You young scoundrel!’ replied Mr Carker, slowly releasing him, and moving back a step into his favourite position. ‘What do you mean by daring to come here?’
‘I didn’t mean no harm, Sir,’ whimpered Rob, putting one hand to his throat, and the knuckles of the other to his eyes. ‘I’ll never come again, Sir. I only wanted work.’
‘Work, young Cain that you are!’ repeated Mr Carker, eyeing him narrowly. ‘Ain’t you the idlest vagabond in London?’
The impeachment, while it much affected Mr Toodle Junior, attached to his character so justly, that he could not say a word in denial. He stood looking at the gentleman, therefore, with a frightened, self-convicted, and remorseful air. As to his looking at him, it may be observed that he was fascinated by Mr Carker, and never took his round eyes off him for an instant.
‘Ain’t you a thief?’ said Mr Carker, with his hands behind him in his pockets.
‘No, sir,’ pleaded Rob.
‘You are!’ said Mr Carker.
‘I ain’t indeed, Sir,’ whimpered Rob. ‘I never did such a thing as thieve, Sir, if you’ll believe me. I know I’ve been a going wrong, Sir, ever since I took to bird-catching and walking-matching. I’m sure a cove might think,’ said Mr Toodle Junior, with a burst of penitence, ‘that singing birds was innocent company, but nobody knows what harm is in them little creeturs and what they brings you down to.’
They seemed to have brought him down to a velveteen jacket and trousers very much the worse for wear, a particularly small red waistcoat like a gorget, an interval of blue check, and the hat before mentioned.
‘I ain’t been home twenty times since them birds got their will of me,’ said Rob, ‘and that’s ten months. How can I go home when everybody’s miserable to see me! I wonder,’ said Biler, blubbering outright, and smearing his eyes with his coat-cuff, ‘that I haven’t been and drownded myself over and over again.’
All of which, including his expression of surprise at not having achieved this last scarce performance, the boy said, just as if the teeth of Mr Carker drew it out of him, and he had no power of concealing anything with that battery of attraction in full play.
‘You’re a nice young gentleman!’ said Mr Carker, shaking his head at him. ‘There’s hemp-seed sown for you, my fine fellow!’
‘I’m sure, Sir,’ returned the wretched Biler, blubbering again, and again having recourse to his coat-cuff: ‘I shouldn’t care, sometimes, if it was growed too. My misfortunes all began in wagging, Sir; but what could I do, exceptin’ wag?’
‘Excepting what?’ said Mr Carker.
‘Wag, Sir. Wagging from school.’
‘Do you mean pretending to go there, and not going?’ said Mr Carker.
‘Yes, Sir, that’s wagging, Sir,’ returned the quondam Grinder, much affected. ‘I was chivied through the streets, Sir, when I went there, and pounded when I got there. So I wagged, and hid myself, and that began it.’
‘And you mean to tell me,’ said Mr Carker, taking him by the throat again, holding him out at arm’s-length, and surveying him in silence for some moments, ‘that you want a place, do you?’
‘I should be thankful to be tried, Sir,’ returned Toodle Junior, faintly.
Mr Carker the Manager pushed him backward into a corner – the boy submitting quietly, hardly venturing to breathe, and never once removing his eyes from his face – and rang the bell.
‘Tell Mr Gills to come here.’
Mr Perch was too deferential to express surprise or recognition of the figure in the corner: and Uncle Sol appeared immediately.
‘Mr Gills!’ said Carker, with a smile, ‘sit down. How do you do? You continue to enjoy your health, I hope?’
‘Thank you, Sir,’ returned Uncle Sol, taking out his pocket-book, and handing over some notes as he spoke. ‘Nothing ails me in body but old age. Twenty-five, Sir.’
‘You are as punctual and exact, Mr Gills,’ replied the smiling Manager, taking a paper from one of his many drawers, and making an endorsement on it, while Uncle Sol looked over him, ‘as one of your own chronometers. Quite right.’
‘The Son and Heir has not been spoken, I find by the list, Sir,’ said Uncle Sol, with a slight addition to the usual tremor in his voice.
‘The Son and Heir has not been spoken,’ returned Carker. ‘There seems to have been tempestuous weather, Mr Gills, and she has probably been driven out of her course.’
‘She is safe, I trust in Heaven!’ said old Sol.
‘She is safe, I trust in Heaven!’ assented Mr Carker in that voiceless manner of his: which made the observant young Toodle tremble again. ‘Mr Gills,’ he added aloud, throwing himself back in his chair, ‘you must miss your nephew very much?’
Uncle Sol, standing by him, shook his head and heaved a deep sigh.
‘Mr Gills,’ said Carker, with his soft hand playing round his mouth, and looking up into the Instrument-maker’s face, ‘it would be company to you to have a young fellow in your shop just now, and it would be obliging me if you would give one house-room for the present. No, to be sure,’ he added quickly, in anticipation of what the old man was going to say, ‘there’s not much business doing there, I know; but you can make him clean the place out, polish up the instruments; drudge, Mr Gills. That’s the lad!’
Sol Gills pulled down his spectacles from his forehead to his eyes, and looked at Toodle Junior standing upright in the corner: his head presenting the appearance (which it always did) of having been newly drawn out of a bucket of cold water; his small waistcoat rising and falling quickly in the play of his emotions; and his eyes intently fixed on Mr Carker, without the least reference to his proposed master.