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186 lips, Florence hurried past him; took Uncle Sol’s snuff-coloured lapels, one in each hand; kissed him on the cheek; and turning, gave her hand to Walter with a simple truth and earnestness that was her own, and no one else’s in the world!

"Going away, Walter?" said Florence.

"Yes, Miss Dombey," he replied, but not so hopefully as he endeavoured: "I have a voyage before me."

"And your Uncle," said Florence, looking back at Solomon. "He is sorry you are going, I am sure. Ah! I see he is! Dear Walter, I am very sorry too."

"Goodness knows," exclaimed Miss Nipper, "there’s a many we could spare instead, if numbers is a object, Mrs. Pipchin as a overseer would come cheap at her weight in gold, and if a knowledge of black slavery should be required, them Blimbers is the very people for the sitiwation."

With that Miss Nipper untied her bonnet strings, and after looking vacantly for some moments into a little black tea-pot that was set forth with the usual homely service on the table, shook her head and a tin canister, and began unasked to make the tea.

In the meantime Florence had turned again to the Instrument-maker, who was as full of admiration as surprise. "So grown!" said old Sol. "So improved! And yet not altered! Just the same!"

"Indeed!" said Florence.

"Ye—yes," returned old Sol, rubbing his hands slowly, and considering the matter half aloud, as something pensive in the bright eyes looking at him arrested his attention. "Yes, that expression was in the younger face, too!"

"You remember me," said Florence with a smile, "and what a little creature I was then?"

"My dear young lady," returned the Instrument-maker, "how could I forget you, often as I have thought of you and heard of you since! At the very moment, indeed, when you came in, Wally was talking about you to me, and leaving messages for you, and—"

"Was he?" said Florence. "Thank you, Walter! Oh thank you, Walter! I was afraid you might be going away and hardly thinking of me;" and again she gave him her little hand so freely and so faithfully that Walter held it for some moments in his own, and could not bear to let it go.

Yet Walter did not hold it as he might have held it once, nor did its touch awaken those old day-dreams of his boyhood that had floated past him sometimes even lately, and confused him with their indistinct and broken shapes. The purity and innocence of her endearing manner, and its perfect trustfulness, and the undisguised regard for him that lay so deeply seated in her constant eyes, and glowed upon her fair face through the smile that shaded—for alas! it was a smile too sad to brighten—it, were not of their romantic race. They brought back to his thoughts the early death-bed he had seen her tending, and the love the child had borne her; and on the wings of such remembrances she seemed to rise up, far above his idle fancies, into clearer and serener air.

"I—I am afraid I must call you Walter’s Uncle, Sir," said Florence to the old man, "if you ’ll let me."

"My dear young lady," cried old Sol. "Let you! Good gracious!"