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454 "Oh here’s a dreadful go for a cove that’s got a master wide awake in the neighbourhood!" exclaimed the wretched Grinder. "To be howled over like this here!"

"Won’t you come and see me, Robby?" cried Mrs. Brown. "Oho, won’t you ever come and see me?"

"Yes, I tell you! Yes, I will!" returned the Grinder.

"That’s my own Rob! That’s my lovey!" said Mrs. Brown, drying the tears upon her shrivelled face, and giving him a tender squeeze. "At the old place, Rob?"

"Yes," replied the Grinder.

"Soon, Robby dear?" cried Mrs. Brown; "and often?"

"Yes. Yes. Yes," replied Rob. "I will indeed, upon my soul and body."

"And then," said Mrs. Brown, with her arms uplifted towards the sky, and her head thrown back and shaking, "if he’s true to his word, I ’ll never come a-near him though I know where he is, and never breathe a syllable about him! Never!"

This ejaculation seemed a drop of comfort to the miserable Grinder, who shook Mrs. Brown by the hand upon it, and implored her with tears in his eyes, to leave a cove and not destroy his prospects. Mrs. Brown, with another fond embrace, assented; but in the act of following her daughter, turned back, with her finger stealthily raised, and asked in a hoarse whisper for some money.

"A shilling, dear!" she said, with her eager avaricious face, "or sixpence! For old acquaintance sake. I’m so poor. And my handsome gal"—looking over her shoulder—"she’s my gal, Rob—half starves me."

But as the reluctant Grinder put it in her hand, her daughter, coming quietly back, caught the hand in hers, and twisted out the coin.

"What," she said, "mother! always money! money from the first, and to the last. Do you mind so little what I said but now? Here. Take it!"

The old woman uttered a moan as the money was restored, but without in any other way opposing its restoration, hobbled at her daughter’s side out of the yard, and along the bye street upon which it opened. The astonished and dismayed Rob staring after them, saw that they stopped, and fell to earnest conversation very soon; and more than once observed a darkly threatening action of the younger woman’s hand (obviously having reference to some one of whom they spoke), and a crooning feeble imitation of it on the part of Mrs. Brown, that made him earnestly hope he might not be the subject of their discourse.

With the present consolation that they were gone, and with the prospective comfort that Mrs. Brown could not live for ever, and was not likely to live long to trouble him, the Grinder, not otherwise regretting his misdeeds than as they were attended with such disagreeable incidental consequences, composed his ruffled features to a more serene expression by thinking of the admirable manner in which he had disposed of Captain Cuttle (a reflection that seldom failed to put him in a flow of spirits), and went to the Dombey Counting House to receive his master’s orders.

There his master, so subtle and vigilant of eye, that Rob quaked before him, more than half expecting to be taxed with Mrs. Brown, gave him