Page:Dombey and Son.djvu/47

Rh "She don’t worry me," was the surprised rejoinder of Polly. "I am very fond of children."

"Oh! but begging your pardon, Mrs. Richards, that don’t matter, you know," returned the black-eyed girl, who was so desperately sharp and biting that she seemed to make one’s eyes water. "I may be very fond of pennywinkles, Mrs. Richards, but it don’t follow that I’m to have 'em for tea."

"Well, it don’t matter," said Polly.

"Oh, thank’e, Mrs. Richards, don’t it!" returned the sharp girl. "Remembering, however, if you ’ll be so good, that Miss Floy’s under my charge, and Master Paul’s under your’n."

"But still we needn’t quarrel," said Polly.

"Oh no, Mrs. Richards," rejoined Spitfire. "Not at all, I don’t wish it, we needn’t stand upon that footing, Miss Floy being a permanency, Master Paul a temporary." Spitfire made use of none but comma pauses; shooting out whatever she had to say in one sentence, and in one breath, if possible.

"Miss Florence has just come home, hasn’t she?" asked Polly.

"Yes, Mrs. Richards, just come, and here, Miss Floy, before you’ve been in the house a quarter of an hour, you go a smearing your wet face against the expensive mourning that Mrs. Richards is a wearing for your Ma!" With this remonstrance, young Spitfire, whose real name was Susan Nipper, detached the child from her new friend by a wrench—as if she were a tooth. But she seemed to do it, more in the excessively sharp exercise of her official functions, than with any deliberate unkindness.

"She’ll be quite happy, now she has come home again," said Polly, nodding to her with an encouraging smile upon her wholesome face, "and will be so pleased to see her dear Papa to-night."

"Lork, Mrs. Richards!" cried Miss Nipper, taking up her words with a jerk. "Don’t. See her dear Papa indeed! I should like to see her do it!"

"Won’t she then?" asked Polly.

"Lork, Mrs. Richards, no, her Pa’s a deal too wrapped up in somebody else, and before there was a somebody else to be wrapped up in she never was a favourite, girls are thrown away in this house, Mrs. Richards, I assure you."

The child looked quickly from one nurse to the other, as if she understood and felt what was said.

"You surprise me!" cried Polly. "Hasn’t Mr. Dombey seen her since—"

"No," interrupted Susan Nipper. "Not once since, and he hadn’t hardly set his eyes upon her before that for months and months, and I don’t think he’d have known her for his own child if he had met her in the streets, or would know her for his own child if he was to meet her in the streets to-morrow, Mrs. Richards, as to me," said Spitfire, with a giggle, "I doubt if he’s aweer of my existence."

"Pretty dear!" said Richards; meaning, not Miss Nipper, but the little Florence.

"Oh! there’s a Tartar within a hundred miles of where we’re now in