Page:Dombey and Son.djvu/122

82 wife, you know,—a comfortable, capital, cosy old lady, who was just a match for you, and knew how to manage you, and keep you in good heart. Here am I, as loving a nephew as ever was (I am sure I ought to be!) but I am only a nephew, and I can’t be such a companion to you when you ’re low and out of sorts as she would have made herself, years ago, though I’m sure I’d give any money if I could cheer you up. And so I say, when I see you with anything on your mind, that I feel quite sorry you haven’t got somebody better about you than a blundering young rough-and-tough boy like me, who has got the will to console you, Uncle, but hasn’t got the way—hasn’t got the way," repeated Walter, reaching over further yet, to shake his uncle by the hand.

"Wally, my dear boy," said Solomon, "if the cosy little old lady had taken her place in this parlour five and forty years ago, I never could have been fonder of her than I am of you."

"I know that, Uncle Sol," returned Walter. "Lord bless you, I know that. But you wouldn’t have had the whole weight of any uncomfortable secrets if she had been with you, because she would have known how to relieve you of 'em, and I don’t."

"Yes, yes, you do," returned the instrument maker.

"Well then, what’s the matter, Uncle Sol?" said Walter, coaxingly. "Come! What’s the matter?"

Solomon Gills persisted that there was nothing the matter; and maintained it so resolutely, that his nephew had no resource but to make a very indifferent imitation of believing him.

"All I can say is, Uncle Sol, that if there is"

"But there isn’t," said Solomon.

"Very well," said Walter. "Then I ’ve no more to say; and that’s lucky, for my time’s up for going to business. I shall look in bye-and-bye when I’m out, to see how you get on, Uncle. And mind, Uncle! I ’ll never believe you again, and never tell you anything more about Mr Carker the Junior, if I find out that you have been deceiving me!"

Solomon Gills laughingly defied him to find out anything of the kind; and Walter, revolving in his thoughts all sorts of impracticable ways of making fortunes and placing the wooden midshipman in a position of independence, betook himself to the offices of Dombey and Son with a heavier countenance than he usually carried there.

There lived in those days, round the corner—in Bishopsgate Street Without—one Brogley, sworn broker and appraiser, who kept a shop where every description of second-hand furniture was exhibited in the most uncomfortable aspect, and under circumstances and in combinations the most completely foreign to its purpose. Dozens of chairs hooked on to washing-stands, which with difficulty poised themselves on the shoulders of sideboards, which in their turn stood upon the wrong side of dining-tables, gymnastic with their legs upward on the tops of other dining-tables, were among its most reasonable arrangements. A banquet array of dish-covers, wine-glasses, and decanters was generally to be seen, spread forth upon the bosom of a four-post bedstead, for the entertainment of such genial company as half-a-dozen pokers, and a hall lamp. A set of window curtains with no windows belonging to them, would be seen gracefully draping a barricade of chests of drawers, loaded with little jars from chemists’ shops; while a homeless hearthrug severed