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Rh which Mr. Carker had been fluttering his papers, and muttering little abstracts of their contents to himself.

"Morfin’s here," he answered, looking up with his widest and almost sudden smile; "humming musical recollections—of his last night’s quartette party, I suppose—through the walls between us, and driving me half mad. I wish he’d make a bonfire of his violoncello, and burn his music-books in it."

"You respect nobody, Carker, I think," said Mr. Dombey.

"No?" inquired Carker, with another wide and most feline show of his teeth. "Well! Not many people, I believe. I wouldn’t answer perhaps,’ he murmured, as if he were only thinking it, "for more than one."

A dangerous quality, if real; and a not less dangerous one, if feigned. But Mr. Dombey hardly seemed to think so, as he still stood with his back to the fire, drawn up to his full height, and looking at his head-clerk with a dignified composure, in which there seemed to lurk a stronger latent sense of power than usual.

"Talking of Morfin," resumed Mr. Carker, taking out one paper from the rest, "he reports a junior dead in the agency at Barbados, and proposes to reserve a passage in the Son and Heir—she’ll sail in a month or so—for the successor. You don’t care who goes, I suppose? We have nobody of that sort here."

Mr. Dombey shook his head with supreme indifference.

"It’s no very precious appointment," observed Mr. Carker, taking up a pen, with which to endorse a memorandum on the back of the paper. "I hope he may bestow it on some orphan nephew of a musical friend. It may perhaps stop his fiddle-playing, if he has a gift that way. Who’s that? Come in!"

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Carker. I didn’t know you were here, Sir,’ answered Walter; appearing with some letters in his hand, unopened, and newly arrived. "Mr. Carker the junior, Sir—"

At the mention of this name, Mr. Carker the Manager was or affected to be, touched to the quick with shame and humiliation. He cast his eyes full on Mr. Dombey with an altered and apologetic look, abased them on the ground, and remained for a moment without speaking.

"I thought, Sir," he said suddenly and angrily, turning on Walter, "that you had been before requested not to drag Mr. Carker the Junior into your conversation."

"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 penwoman—by Florence. Mr. Dombey,