Page:Dombey and Son.djvu/41

Rh let her have it when and how she pleases. Mr. what's-your-name, a word with you, if you please!"

Thus arrested on the threshold as he was following his wife out of the room, Toodle returned and confronted Mr. Dombey alone. He was a strong, loose, round-shouldered, shuffling, shaggy fellow, on whom his clothes sat negligently: with a good deal of hair and whisker, deepened in its natural tint, perhaps by smoke and coal-dust: hard knotty hands: and a square forehead, as coarse in grain as the bark of an oak. A thorough contrast in all respects, to Mr. Dombey, who was one of those close-shaved close-cut monied gentlemen who are glossy and crisp like new bank notes, and who seem to be artificially braced and tightened as by the stimulating action of golden shower-baths.

"You have a son I believe?" said Mr. Dombey.

"Four on 'em Sir. Four hims and a her. All alive!"

"Why, it's as much as you can afford to keep them!" said Mr. Dombey.

"I couldn't hardly afford but one thing in the world less, Sir."

"What is that?"

"To lose 'em Sir."

"Can you read?" asked Mr. Dombey.

"Why, not partick'ler Sir."

"Write?"

"With chalk, Sir?"

"With anything?"

"I could make shift to chalk a little bit, I think, if I was put to it," said Toodle after some reflection.

"And yet," said !Mr. Dombey, "you are two or three and thirty I suppose?"

"Thereabouts, I suppose Sir," answered Toodle, after more reflection.

"Then why don't you learn?" asked Mr. Dombey.

"So I'm a going to Sir. One of my little boys is agoing to learn me, when he's old enough, and been to school himself."

"Well!" said Mr. Dombey, after looking at him attentively, and with no great favour, as he stood gazing round the room (principally round the ceiling) and still drawing his hand across and across his mouth. "You heard what I said to your wife just now?" "Polly heerd it," said Toodle, jerking his hat over his shoulder in the direction of the door, with an air of perfect confidence in his better half. "It's all right."

"As you appear to leave everything to her," said Mr. Dombey, frustrated in his intention of impressing his views still more distinctly on the husband, as the stronger character, "I suppose it is of no use my saying anything to you."

"Not a bit," said Toodle. "Polly heerd it. She's awake Sir."

"I won't detain you any longer then," returned Mr. Dombey disappointed. "Where have you worked all your life?"

"Mostly underground Sir, 'till I got married. I come to the level then. I'm a going on one of these here railroads when they comes into full play."

As the last straw breaks the laden camel's back, this piece of underground information crushed the sinking spirits of Mr. Dombey. He