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184 feathers, was ever more indifferent to the appeals of its savage votaries, than was the midshipman to these marks of attachment.

Walter’s heart felt heavy as he looked round his old bed-room, up among the parapets and chimney-pots, and thought that one more night already darkening would close his acquaintance with it, perhaps for ever. Dismantled of his little stock of books and pictures, it looked coldly and reproachfully on him for his desertion, and had already a foreshadowing upon it of its coming strangeness. "A few hours more," thought Walter, "and no dream I ever had here when I was a school-boy will be so little mine as this old room. The dream may come back in my sleep, and I may return waking to this place, it may be: but the dream at least will serve no other master, and the room may have a score, and every one of them may change, neglect, misuse it."

But his uncle was not to be left alone in the little back-parlour, where he was then sitting by himself; for Captain Cuttle, considerate in his roughness, stayed away against his will, purposely that they should have some talk together unobserved: so Walter, newly returned home from his last day’s bustle, descended briskly, to bear him company.

"Uncle," he said gaily, laying his hand upon the old man’s shoulder, "what shall I send you home from Barbados?"

"Hope, my dear Wally. Hope that we shall meet again, on this side of the grave. Send me as much of that as you can."

"So I will, Uncle: I have enough and to spare, and I ’ll not be chary of it! And as to lively turtles, and limes for Captain Cuttle’s punch, and preserves for you on Sundays, and all that sort of thing, why I ’ll send you ship-loads, Uncle: when I’m rich enough."

Old Sol wiped his spectacles, and faintly smiled.

"That’s right, Uncle!" cried Walter, merrily, and clapping him half a dozen times more upon the shoulder. "You cheer up me! I ’ll cheer up you! We ’ll be as gay as larks to-morrow morning, Uncle, and we ’ll fly as high! As to my anticipations, they are singing out of sight now."

"Wally, my dear boy," returned the old man, "I ’ll do my best, I ’ll do my best."

"And your best, Uncle," said Walter, with his pleasant laugh, "is the best best that I know. You ’ll not forget what you ’re to send me, Uncle?"

"No, Wally, no," replied the old man; "everything I hear about Miss Dombey, now that she is left alone, poor lamb, I ’ll write. I fear it won’t be much though, Wally."

"Why, I ’ll tell you what, Uncle," said Walter, after a moment’s hesitation, "I have just been up there."

"Ay, ay, ay?" murmured the old man, raising his eyebrows, and his spectacles with them.

"Not to see her," said Walter, "though I could have seen her, I dare say, if I had asked, Mr. Dombey being out of town: but to say a parting word to Susan. I thought I might venture to do that, you know, under the circumstances, and remembering when I saw Miss Dombey last."

"Yes, my boy, yes," replied his uncle, rousing himself from a temporary abstraction.